LAHORE: The agriculturists and progressive farmers have termed the outgoing year (2020) as a very tough period in which profitability of the growers was marred due to COVID-19 Pandemic, climate change, poor policies of the government and other factors.
Farmers Bureau Pakistan (FBP) President Dr Zafar Hayyat talking to the Business Recorder on Saturday said that during 2020 farmers suffered heavy financial losses because of above-mentioned factors besides many others.
"Rabi crops faced another phenomenon - the extreme climatic conditions. Corn farmers were particularly affected by it. The corn farmers saw low productivity and low market prices."
Wheat farmers also saw an unprecedented fungal attack on their crop. Though disease is not a new phenomenon, it was curtailed in the past by the public sector departments by continuously developing wheat varieties having resistance against it. For the last few years, these departments did not perform rather falsely claimed for having such varieties, and seed mafia ripping the farmers by selling them to the farmers," Dr Zafar Hayat added. He said cotton farmers are yet another group badly affected. Pakistan witnessed lowest national production which never happened in the last few decades, all because of non-performing seed varieties, outdated seed technologies and unfavourable climatic conditions for cotton plants. Again, the government could not come up with a solid plan to resolve these long-standing issues, especially the seed varieties and seed technology, he regretted.
The Farmers Bureau Pakistan (FBP) President said that the government may need 2-3 billion of dollars on the import of cotton, wheat and sugar this year due to shortage in local production but the bill may further rise in the years to come if the government continues to ignore this sector.
Co-Founder of the Agriculture Republic, Aamer Hayat Bhandara while talking to this scribe said many factors can be blamed in lower productivity of agriculture in Pakistan during the past few years from uncertain irrigation water to unpredictable weather patterns and erratic rains; poor supply chain to less availability of storage facilities, low investments in extension services, research and minimal policy incentives for farmers to adapt smart practices. He said farmers were earlier recovering from the severe impact of locusts last year 2020 was started with COVID-19 lockdown that almost destroyed the rural communities.
He said in 2020-21 he is expecting wheat shortage because of the different opinions of provinces on the support price of wheat, late announcements of support price as well as subsidies for inputs by the federal government to enhance the wheat production beside no concrete plan for increasing its per acre productivity which already lower against the best yields around the world. "Looking into the global scenario and new variants of coronavirus, I still believe the agriculture sector of Pakistan including the dairy sector can strengthen the economic situation and support the employment and cope the poverty by investing more into this particular sector against cement and construction," he concluded.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020