Pakistan agriculture trade: US invests $4 million in six-year distant learning project

The Untied States has supported a six-year initiative with an amount of $4 million to support Government of Pakistan's efforts to bolster indigenous production and agriculture trade, said a senior US Department of Agriculture (USDA) official here on Wednesday.
Deborah Hamilton, a senior USDA official told an interactive session of a group of journalists that the USDA with support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) invested more than $4 million in a six-year distance learning project initiative to support the government of Pakistan's efforts to increase agricultural trade.
She said that the programme is aimed at strengthening Pakistan's ability to comply with international trade rules to increase gross domestic product (GDP) through greater commodity exports. Since 2011, she added that the USDA and partners, CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International) and Texas A&M University, have joined forces to create a distance learning project to bolster Pakistan's sanitary and phytosanitary, also known as SPS, skills and knowledge.
With interactive workshops supplemented by online training modules, she said that the USDA SPS Distance Learning project is advancing Pakistan's adoption of international plant and animal health standards by training 30 Department of Plant Protection officials and other Pakistani agricultural professionals.
The workshops and training modules focus on a range of topics, including pest-risk management, market access, treatments, and inspections, she added. She further said that the USDA is also supporting the Government of Pakistan with regard to improvement of the animal health. "Basically, we decided to do this programme because we believe that it is the best way to help Pakistan increase income and economic prosperity. It is for increasing the ability to trade, and to trade you have to meet international standards", she said.
Dr Babar Bajwa, CABI's Rgional Director Central and West Asia said that the projects aimed at promoting agriculture trade of the country. He said that it was a big challenge to train the relevant department officials to learn the basic science behind the import and export.
He maintained that in the last four-year the market base of the agriculture trade has been increased and the local farmers have been made able to increase production and deal with the plants' diseases. He pointed out that import and exports are equally important, adding the banana in the country has developed a disease which came to the country from import. "It's important to see as to what we are importing from abroad in order to avoid plants related diseases", he said.
He said that the training modules that have been prepared are also offered to be taught as curriculum at Agriculture University Faisalabad and the CABI is also ready to share these with other universities of the country. "If we want to compete with rest of the world, we have to develop a research based scientific society in the country, which is need of the hour to increase quality production for export in rest of the world," he added.
"Proper regulation of exports and imports is key to meeting the demands of foreign buyers as well as protecting Pakistan's domestic agriculture and consumers. We are hopeful that these courses will serve as a resource for Pakistan's phytosanitary regulators," said Agriculture Counsellor David Williams.
The success of these training modules in Pakistan has made SPS Distance Learning Modules a key component of a new USAID initiative called the Food Safety Network, which will expand the curriculum to include animal health and food safety and deploy them globally in several languages.
Agriculture is Pakistan's second largest sector, accounting for more than 21 percent of GDP. It remains by far the largest employer, with 46 percent of the labour force working in the sector.
For the nearly 62 percent of the Pakistani population in rural areas, agriculture is a vital part of daily life. The US government supports Pakistani scientists and farmers to improve agricultural productivity in Pakistan, and to meet economic objectives and food security needs, with USAID allocating more than $350 million in funding to support Pakistan's agricultural sector from fiscal year 2002 to 2015.