The crops of wheat, cotton and sugarcane in the country have remained short of their targets this year, as revealed the report of Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Livestock, but the agriculture experts gave different figures.
They said that wheat crop witnessed a major setback. Despite official estimates of a bumper crop, its output fell short of target by 1.5 million tonnes and stood at 20.5 million tonnes against a target of 22 million tonnes, while it was 21.6 million tonnes last year.
Cotton production stood at 13 million bales against the target of 15 million bales. Although the crop size was lower than the target, it was the highest ever achieved by the country, said the experts.
According to estimates, sugarcane production has been estimated at 44.23 million tonnes against a target of 48 million tonnes, potato production at 1.6 million tonnes against a target of 1.7 million tonnes, gram output at 458,000 tonnes, showing a reduction of about 47 percent over the last year's production, rice crop at 5.422 million tonnes from an area of 2.575 million hectares, showing an improvement of eight percent over the last year's production of five million tonnes.
Similarly, the estimated maize crop was 3.276 million tonnes, which has registered an increase of 17 percent over the last year's production. The chillies have been estimated at 119,000 tonnes, showing an increase of 17 percent over the last year's output.
It is learnt that the cotton crop target for the next year has been set at 13.816 million bales from an area of 3.247 million hectares, while the target for sugarcane has been fixed at 50.5 million tonnes from an area of 1.005 million hectares.
The rice target has been set at 5.654 million tonnes from an area of 2.685 million hectares. Likewise, the maize crop target has been fixed at 3.439 million tonnes from an area of 1.001 million hectares.