Pakistan can easily produce more exportable surplus in rice, without bringing more land under rice cultivation, by just introducing rice transplanters, laser land levelling and Kabuta harvesters as these machines will help increasing farm yields by about 30 percent.

More exportable surplus means fetching more precious foreign exchange, increasing the profitability of the growers and ensuring food security.

At present manually, around 50,000-60,000 plants of rice are sown in an acre in the country while using a transplanter can take this number to 100,000 plants an acre leading to increase in per acre yield. By this way, Pakistan can increase basmati rice production by another 20 percent or so without bringing more arable land under rice cultivation.

Similarly, if the land is levelled by the use of laser land levellers, we can ensure saving of 30 percent of water in rice cultivation besides saving the fertilizers, pesticides and other nutrients. This will bring down the cost of sowing adding to the profits of the growers. According to studies, 4000 litres of water is needed to produce 1 kilogram of rice and by saving 30 percent we can save billions of rupees in a country which is already water-starved.

Samee Ullah Chaudhry, former Chairman Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP) and CEO Atlas Foods disclosed this while talking to a delegation of the Agriculture Journalists Association (AJA) here on Friday. The delegation observed the process of converting paddy into bright shining super basmati rice.

REAP Treasurer Abubakar Farooq Mirza and Secretary-General Kashif ur Rehman were also present on this occasion.

"We have a lot of potential to export rice but government and farmers are lacking vision and policies whereas India is getting almost 2 tons yield from 1 hectare whereas we are still hovering around 1.2 ton only."

Samee said that using rice harvesters can help to control the post-harvest losses which account 10 percent of the total crop at present. "World overuse of harvester is being encouraged whereas in Pakistan, mostly the Paddy is cut using wheat harvesters which produce more broken in the Paddy and farmer is losing money.

For example, one per cent of additional damage to paddy reduce the export price by $10 to a ton and you can multiply this to millions of tons of paddy. If implemented this saving will be a great addition," Samee Ullah Naeem claimed.

At REAP we are of the policy "Preserve what we grow and Grow More - Export more", Samee Ullah said, adding that paddy in Pakistan is mostly sun-dried that increases yellow kernels due to heat damage and produces a fungus that risks a generation of mycotoxins, a carcinogenic and genotoxic material.

Less than 10 per cent of paddy harvest is mechanically dried and we need to incentivize industry that uses mechanical dryers for paddy drying. Almost 10% of the crop is damaged due to lack of drying facility and by this interception, we can have surplus grain worth 250 million USD to export.

The unavailability of low markup (ERF) funds is considered as an impediment for rice exports. If funds aren't available on priority, we will lose out our competitiveness and will miss the target of 2.5 billion USD for this year.

Demand-driven research is the only workable solution as proven elsewhere in the world many times. We still follow the process of research in isolation whether in the public or private sector, federal or provincial or between traditional rice breeder or molecular scientist. As a combination of the above and other factors, the result is an agricultural disaster in the making.

If all these measures are handled on priority, we may be able to double exports to 5 billion USD in next 3 years.

Atlas Foods (Pvt) Limited is a well-known name in rice export around the world. Since last year, Atlas Foods in collaboration with Ebro Foods (Spain) is successfully disseminating the standards of Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) in Punjab and Sindh provinces.

SRP is a global multi-stakeholder alliance launched in 2011 and led by UN Environment, IRRI and GIZ, comprising 120 institutional stakeholders, including public and private sector stakeholders, research, financial institutions and NGOs.

Atlas Foods and Ebro Foods are practically implementing the principles of Sustainable Rice Platform with the help of farmers. Initially, work has been started with 250 farmers in tehsil Kamoki (district Gujranwala) and tehsil Khanpur (district Shikarpur) on sustainable Rice production. In this project, practical training is being given to the farmers on sustainable rice production by making learning groups (LG's).

This will not only reduce the cost of production but also increase the per acre yield of rice crop. Sustainable Rice Platform will not only boost the yield but also help improve the quality of rice according to the international standards which will not only result in a major boost to the export sector of the country but also make its mark around the globe.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019