Recent spell of rains, hail and wind storm although provided some benefit to the sugar cane crop even then it caused heavy losses to wheat, canola, gram and sunflower crops in the country. This was claimed by the Agri Forum Pakistan Chairman Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal while talking to media persons here on Saturday.
He claimed that the recent spell of rains also devastated cotton crop over 25,000 to 30,000 acres of land and farmers have to sow their land again. He claimed that recent spell of rains devastated around 1.3 million maund of wheat, 200,000 maund of Canola, 50,000 maund of gram and 15,000 maund of sunflower crop.
Mughal said that meteorological department predicted rains at the end of March, which could have been proved beneficial for all the Rabi crops, but, unfortunately, these rains delayed and landed in mid of April. These rains not only delayed the harvesting of Rabi crops but also delayed the sowing of Khareef crops including cotton. While growers had to sow their land again in areas where cotton had already been planted causing of loss of millions of rupees to the growers, he added.
He claimed that this year cotton would be sown on an area of 8.5 million acres and rice on an area of 6 million acres. While sugarcane would be sown on an area of 2.6 million acres of land, he added. Agri Forum Pakistan Chairman advised the government to help the growers who had suffered loss due to recent spell of rains and bring down the prices of fertilisers to half and exempt agricultural tube wells from load shedding so as to ensure timely sowing of Khareef crops as 80 per cent of the exports from Pakistan also rely on two important Khareef crops namely rice and cotton.