According to a report appearing in this newspaper on May 5, a team of experts, which surveyed the entire area of cultivation of sunflower in lower Sindh, found fruiting body missing in the plants grown, thereby declaring it a total loss. Needless to point out, the outcome of survey amply corroborated the growers' claim of heavy losses suffered, due to supply of substandard seed, over an area of 30,000 acres in Badin and Thatta districts. The news report also had it that the growers in the area, who had suffered heavy losses in major crops - wheat, rice and sugarcane - due to water shortage and long dry spell, had shifted to sunflower for its much lesser water requirement. The shift to sunflower, it has been maintained, was also demand oriented, and keeping in view the vast potential of the crop in the province.
It will thus be seen that the whole effort to make the best of scarce water supply in the region, ended up in a mere exercise in futility mainly due to the supply of substandard hybrid sunflower seed, of which some 1.2 million kilogram was imported for 0.5 million acres.
The predicament of the growers from an evident failure or intentional negligence in the procurement and supply of imported seed should leave little to doubt either. This should be all the more shocking when the sunflower growers have been rendered solely dependent on multinational companies for their seed requirements, and for which, as they contend, they are made to pay double the price of the actual cost of the seed in the country of origin.
It will, thus, be noted that the demand of the growers of Badin district for prompt refund of the Rs 1.2 million cost incurred on purchase of substandard seed will appear to be justified. More to this, reference has also been made to the provision in the Seed Act, under which the company supplying substandard seed, if so established, is liable to refund the price paid for it.
Again, while resenting omission of any action for compensation for the total crop losses, inclusive of water charges incurred on raising of the crop, the growers have rightly appealed for so amending the Seed Act, as to make it obligatory on the seed sellers to compensate for the entire loss suffered on account of substandard seed supplies.
The same can be said about their idea of doing away with dependence on multinational companies, and to entrust Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, agriculture universities and other agriculture related organisations with the task of developing hybrid seed in the country.
All this is apt to remind one of Minfal's 'oilseed action plan' conceived three years ago. Its idea of raising the output through incentives to farmers with assured marketing, reasonable prices and subsidised inputs, could have certainly resulted in averting the crises on the edible front.
Minfal's realistic plan was based on a two-pronged strategy, seeking increase in productivity and larger crop area. For one thing, it envisaged enhancement in per acre yield of sunflower and canola through application of modern technology, development and use of better crop varieties, as also improved research and extension system for the crops. Its emphasis on replacement of late wheat with sunflower and vacation of some area for canola following increase in wheat yield appeared to be quite sensible.
The strategy has proved instrumental in boosting oilseed production to a considerable extent. But, unfortunately, it seems to have remained only partly implemented for one reason or the other. This should become evident from the kind of problems now confronting sunflower growers in lower Sindh, thereby beckoning the authorities to do the needful without any loss of time.
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