This is apropos 'Agriculture & allied sectors: Shahbaz announces Rs 100bn for development' carried by Business Recorder on Sunday. According to it, the Punjab Chief Minister has announced up to Rs 100 billion exclusively for the development of agriculture and allied sectors for the next two years and also the formation of a "Kissan commission" (farmers' commission) to look into their complaints and issues.
Addressing the opening session of the first-ever Punjab Agriculture Conference 2016 the Khadim-e-Aala of Punjab said, "This allocation will purely be for development and subsidy to be extended to the growers during the next two years and nothing to do with the departmental budget. This will also not include a sum of Rs 150 billion being spent on farm to market roads in the rural areas, or other allocations for providing clean drinking water or any other incentive to the rural folk."
He remarked: "Now the ball is in your court ... We are going to allocate a huge sum and it is now your duty to make this province once again the food basket of this country and the region." The Punjab government has taken the right step towards improvement of agriculture and its allied sector. The question, however, is: how will the farming sector look at his benevolence when the prices of commodities are already witnessing a decline in the global market? According to Jocelyn G. Brown of USDA's Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS), for example, producing lower-value bulk commodities on small farms, even with higher yields, rarely generates sufficient income to lift a farmer out of poverty. Has the Punjab government taken this fact into consideration?