Tunnel farming technology for cultivating vegetables is gaining popularity among small growers and farmers in the Sialkot district.
Sources in the Agriculture department told Business Recorder on Sunday that over 1,500 small farmers have adopted the tunnel farming technology in the district. Many more farmers, who are willing to adopt this technology due to its economic benefits, are contacting the Agriculture department to keep themselves abreast with the technology. The Agriculture department has been extending full cooperation and assistance to all those who are interested in adopting this technology, the sources said.
Elaborating, they said that some progressive farmers, who have already installed walk-in and low tunnels in Sialkot, Daska, Sambrial and Pasrur tehsils of the district, are cultivating off-season vegetables like cucumber, tomato, green chilly, pumpkin, bitter gourd, water melon and melons, etc.
The tunnel technology has, on the one hand, paved the way for bringing revolutionary changes in the agriculture sector and, on the other, it has enabled the growers to produce off-season vegetables and improve their economic conditions, the added.
Meanwhile, the Punjab government in view of popularity of the technology has decided to give 50 per cent subsidy to the growers for introducing tunnel farming technology in the province.
Maqsood Jutt and Akhtar Choudhary, the two progressive farmers, said that they are successfully attaining the yield of off-season vegetables and the crops giving them better returns.
The farmers community had installed "walk in and low tunnels" without seeking any financial support from the provincial government, they said, adding that per acre yield of vegetables cultivated under tunnel farming technology is much higher than the traditional farming.