HYDERABAD: Provincial Minister for Agriculture Muhammad Ismail Rahu has said that in order to promote agriculture in Sindh and protect crops from the use of toxic pesticides, 50 centers of Natural Enemy Farm Reservoir (NEFR) have been set up across Sindh.

This he said while inaugurating a centre of NEFR at Syed Manzoor Hussain Shah Jilani Farm near Sultanabad today. The Provincial Minister said that the growers use various pesticides to protect the crops from insects but the effects of these pesticides remain in the crops which cause diseases in human beings.

He informed that there are 1 million species of agro-insects in the world out of which only 1% are harmful for crops and to eradicate them NEFR centres are being set up not only to protect crops from pesticides but also diseases and the government’s health bill will significantly be reduced.

He said that Sindh Irrigated Agriculture Productivity Enhancement Project (SIAPEP) has been launched by the Sindh Agriculture Department which has three different components under which water courses would be lined to prevent wastage of water and deal with water shortage. He informed that in the first phase of this project work of lining of 5500 water courses has been started across Sindh out of which 4232 water courses have been completed while remaining watercourses would be completed by the end of this year.

He said that due to shortage of water in Sindh, drip irrigation system is being introduced which has yielded better results as under this system water consumed less and production increased. He said that all the tube wells installed by the Agriculture Department to the farmers would be converted on the solar system so that the farmers could avoid heavy bills.

He said that the second component of SIAPEP includes laser leveling under which technical training is being imparted so that farmers could select appropriate land for appropriate crop.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021