Experts for launching corporate, cooperative farming simultaneously

LAHORE: Agri-business experts have proposed the government launch both corporate and cooperative farming simultaneously under its ‘Green Pakistan Initiative’ to ensure the growth of the national Agricultural economy by uplifting the whole agriculture sector involving both small landholders and the big farms.

“China was behind Pakistan in the agricultural sector during the late 80s as their land was fragmented. The same is the case with Pakistan, as per official sources 87 percent of farming is being done by the land owners having less than 10 acres of land.

China put together its small landholdings, and made big farms thus pushing its production up through collective and collaborative efforts,” said Engr Jawed Saleem Qureshi, Chairman of Four Brothers, a big agricultural group dealing in different agricultural inputs.

Jawed who also gave a presentation on this topic at the Green Pakistan launch event, said that as per his studies, cooperative converting into corporate farming was the main reason for the success of agriculture in China. He said that he had proposed that a cluster should be created by joining small landholders of five villages at least which should have land below 25 acres.

This cluster will be setting up their own godown, market to sell the commodities at Apni Mandi besides developing cooperative, bank, processing units of value addition in AGRI crops.

He said that the government should extend grants to such a cluster to help it start its working and march towards success. He believed that small landholders did not get good quality agricultural inputs and also pay higher prices to ‘Arhtis’ or the distributors of these inputs, as they usually take these as loans. He claimed that in some cases they charge 50 percent more the price of pesticides or seeds.

However, the case is not the same with regard to fertilizers. He observed that when small farmers would make a cluster and turn their small landholdings into a big landholding, then input manufacturing companies would approach them and may offer them their quality products at discounted rates thus bringing down the cost of farming.

Jawed said that such a cluster should also have CO2 cold storages where any product remained fresh for more extended periods and does even not lose its taste. He said that the government could start with 100 Technologically Advanced Modern Agri Centres (TAMAC) in this regard as pilot projects. ‘The Government had allocated Rs5 billion in this regard for the current year budget and now it was needed that it should be spent for the same purpose instead of transferring this amount to other heads,” he added.

Qureshi stated besides this, if we could also ensure the provision of quality seed with the potential of giving more per acre yield, it could earn billions of rupees in addition to the present earnings by ploughing the same land which was being ploughed presently.

He said that the government should just allow private companies to import the best seed of any crop being sown anywhere in the world. He said that if we could increase our wheat yield just by 7.25 maund per acre, cotton yield by 12.15 maund per acre, rice by 40.94 maund per acre, sugarcane by 288.05 maund per acre, rapeseed/mustard by 16.04 maund per acre, then Pakistan could earn additional US$15.83 billion more from the current land.

Similarly, he said seeds of mustard (such as Cazola) and cotton with higher yield sown over one million acres of land under corporate farming could also earn Rs500 billion additional per annum to the country.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023