Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) assisted "Crop maximisation project" has been initiated in 109 villages of Sindh, NWFP, Balochistan, Punjab and Azad Kashmir.
Official sources told Business Recorder here on Wednesday that project would be accomplished in 2005 at a cost of Rs 500 million.
The main objectives of the project are to supplement the country's ongoing efforts to increase food product through crop productivity, ensure food security and alleviate poverty in rural areas through improving income of small farmers and build a mechanism for sustaining productivity enhancement and food security programme.
The project is being carried out in 49 villages of Punjab including Sialkot, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Sahiwal, Rahimyar Khan and Muzaffargarh districts, 28 villages of Sindh including Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Sanghar and Larkana districts.
In NWFP 13 villages of Banu and D.I Khan districts, in Balochistan 14 villages of Nasirabad and Loralai districts, while five villages of Azad Kashmir in one district are included in the project, the sources disclosed.
Special attention under the programme has been focused on increasing productivity for improving food security and meet rapidly growing food demands and to reduce seasonal and year to year variability in production on economically and environmentally sustainable basis.
Three main crops like wheat, rice and cotton would be covered while small crops like pulses, oilseeds, maize and fodder were also included in the project for providing assistance to the farmers, sources added.
The completion of this project would be supportive in bringing boom in per acre yield of crops and help reduce poverty scale in these districts of the country.