The government should take immediate steps to meet the looming challenge of food insecurity; otherwise it would be made impossible for the huge population of the country to manage two times meal. Food security does not mean only availability of grains in the market, but it means the people should have the purchasing power.
This was the consensus of the economists at Pakistan Institute of Development Economics 26th annual conference, which concluded here on Thursday. Despite the fact that Pakistan was an agrarian country, but food security situation was deteriorating with each passing day, as country's import bill on edible items is gradually increasing.
They said that unemployment was rapidly increasing across the country due to prolonged gas and electricity load-shedding, which is directly pushing more and more people below the poverty line. They urged the government to formulate viable polices for the exploration of gas and generation of electricity, adding if the government remain unable to resolve gas and power issues immediately, it will deprive millions of more people from food, as Pakistan's industry is totally dependent on power and gas.
Dr Abdul Salam, Munir Ahmed and Umar Farooq while speaking at conference on the topic of "Food and Energy Security" said that owing to the unprecedented nation-wide flash floods, over 20 million people of which, 80 percent directly dependent on agriculture were badly affected.
"The people most severely affected were predominantly marginal farmers, small and unskilled workers. Most of them lost their entire livelihood and currently dependent on food support - the majority of them will take long time to stand on their own feet. They are currently facing high food prices and are forced to unintended distress sale of animals at low prices. Loss in assets and infrastructure is resulting into unacceptably low food intake, and inadequate diet and mal-nourishment of children. There are fears of rampant spread of human and animal diseases" they observed.
They said that the floods have wipe out the belongings of the poor farmers as above one million houses were destroyed, over 2 million hectors of standing crops were damaged worth Rs 250. They said that the present situation demands introduction of effective measures not only for food distribution and marketing system in these areas, but also for urgent help in rehabilitation of farm lands and houses, provision of seed and implements, human and livestock health care with close monitoring until their own food production capacities and/or other livelihood are revived.
More than 1.2 million livestock and 6 million poultry heads worth billions of rupees have also been lost, about 0.5 million tons of wheat seed for Rabi season stored at the households' level completely destroyed and the loss of cash crops, particularly cotton, would severely affect the textile/agro-based industry and the employment and export, they added.
Dr Munir Ahmed of PIDE said that the major hindrance in achieving food security in Pakistan is the high levels of poverty, and thus reduction in poverty is a most powerful tool to improve food security that can be achieved through equitable economic growth.
He said that supply-side and demand-side issues of food security are the future challenges in the developing countries like Pakistan; therefore, both challenges need to be addressed to ease food insecurity. Pakistan faces both of these challenges - loosing out food production potential, and access to food is also becoming a serious threat because high incidence of poverty both in urban and in rural areas, he added.
Discussing the role of the government in addressing the food security issue, he said that government was mainly focusing urban areas and it is difficult to effectively address both of these challenges simultaneously. Pakistan has the potential to further develop its agriculture sector to which about 2/3rd of country's population is directly or indirectly depends for livelihood.
Dr Umar Farooq of PIDE observed that Pakistan's economy is experiencing structural transformation and the role agriculture in economic development is changing fast-its share in overall output of the country is declining but labour stays back, and a very small proportion of farms experiencing fast modernisation, while majority of the farmers are resource poor and loosing out even the existing potential. Therefore, Pakistan has to adapt three-pronged strategy - develop farm and non-farm sectors as well as reducing polarisation from within the agriculture sector by either helping the inefficient farmer to approach the frontier or helping them to find alternative, he maintained.
He said that the recent flood have affected the already food insecure districts and underdeveloped where most of the schools and health facilities were either severely damaged or destroyed completely - limiting the provision of health services in flood affected areas for a longer time.
This implies that in the near future, food security issues shall be more serious in flood affected areas in general and in poor food insecure districts in particular. That may result into further rise in food prices, he added.
Giving his presentation on "Using Health Belief Model to Understand Pesticide Use Decision" Dr Muhammad Khan said that the extensive use of pesticide results in substantial health and environmental threats. He said that research has proved that health and environmental hazards of pesticides can be avoided by awareness, education and changing farmer's attitude.
He said that Pakistani government policies were either directly or indirectly encourages farmers to use pesticide to achieve higher crop yields and over the years pesticide encouragement policies have led to erosion of alternative pest management practices among farmers in cotton growing areas.
The study concludes that cultural beliefs regarding pesticide related health effects, lack of information regarding and/or non-existent alternative pest management and fear of economic losses remains the main barrier in adoption of more sustainable pest management practices. In addition, the powerful consumer services network by pesticide companies perpetuating the vicious circle of pesticide use and serving as the chief barriers to switching to alternative pest management strategies. Therefore in seeking for a better solution to pest management problems and negative externalities of pesticide use, the priority issues are not just how to set up regulations and policies that would ban pesticide use in crop production, but how to use pesticide correctly and safely and avoid its misuse and overuse, so that farmers could internalise the negative health and environmental externalities of pesticide use and find better pest management solution. There is also a strong need to convince farmers that pesticide use is not the only way of controlling pests. Hence, improving farmer's knowledge of pest management and pesticide safety issues are critical. The availability of alternative pest management techniques is also an issue, which should be resolved. Although some farmers decide to adopt alternative pest control strategies but such services are largely not available to farmers in study area.
The results of the study bear some implications for policy formulation: The government should commit further resources to research and training in integrated crop management with an orientation towards the reduction of pesticide use and safe use of pesticide. The results which indicate that heightened risk perception and IPM training are the main determinants of safe behaviour of pesticide use offer opportunities to integrate IPM technology into current crop protection methods. The feasibility of the IPM technology has been highlighted by many studies (eg Azeem et al, 2002 & 2004) which were conducted in the cotton growing area of Punjab. In addition, the common belief among farmers that pesticide are getting less and less effective than before makes this claim stronger that the farming community in study area will warmly welcome IPM methods of crop protection.
An important implication is that the investment of public resources in providing information can be effective even when resources for a more detailed intervention, such as provision of alternative pest management or enforcement of pesticide related laws are lacking. The government should strengthen information and services provided by the agriculture extension for plant protection. The interventions can take many forms, including media events, NGOs and community programs undertaken to promote awareness and understanding of the risk issues. Intervention should also include social institutions (eg, community leaders) that can help make farmers become aware of the risk and subsequently leads to some sort of change in knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. There is a need to overhaul current extension services by improving their knowledge on the changing trends of pest population.