Punjab would emulate Indian Punjab model of agriculture marketing to enhance the level of protection to farmers cultivating cash crops in times of domestic market crises, said provincial minister for Agriculture Marketing Rana Muhammad Qasim Noon on Sunday.
"Agriculture marketing system of Indian Punjab was an ideal one but its implementation may take few months subject to law-making at home", Qasim Noon told newsmen in a 'meet the press' programme at Multan Press Club.
A delegation headed by the provincial minister for agriculture marketing would leave for India this month to study the agriculture marketing system in Indian Punjab where it would visit markets besides universities at Ludhiana and Hariana and agriculture institutes at Mumbai and Dehli.
"Amidst exchanges in other fields between both the countries, it is our desire that we should learn from them where they are good and to give them something in such fields in which we can be helpful to them", Qasim Noon said. Recommendations would be prepared after completion of delegation's visit to India and then the matter would be put up before the House for approval, he added.
To a question, he said, Indian Punjab model should be implemented in full as in his point of view the same was an ideal mechanism in terms of giving protection to farmers in case the market of cash crops crashes.
He also mentioned the recent visit of chairman Market Board Indian Punjab to Pakistan.
Elaborating practice in Indian Punjab, Qasim Noon said, whenever domestic market of any cash crop crashes, the market committees there store the farmers' produce in their warehouses and in return give them vouchers which farmers can use to obtain soft-term loans from banks.
They can obtain loan worth 80 percent of the voucher value and thus face no problem in sowing and applying inputs for the new crop, he maintained. Market committees pay back the bank loans when the domestic market returns to normal or experiences a boom.
Things would improve for farmers after implementation of this system, hoped Rana Qasim Noon.
He lauded chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi for solving the potato growers' problem, that stemmed out of recent price crisis, by exporting 250,000 tons of potato by offering subsidy of 25 percent in freight to exporters.