LAHORE: Stakeholders expressed mixed reactions over the performance of the agricultural sector during the year 2023 as farmers continued to face shortages and high prices of fertilizers, especially at the peak time of fertilizer application but the crop production remained good as compared to the production of the last year, 2022.
Farmers Bureau Pakistan (FBP) President Dr Zafar Hayat complained that the farmers saw another bad year of governance in the agriculture sector, as the government failed to provide fertilizer at controlled prices, which ripped the farmers and profited the hoarders.
However, Pakistan Hitech Hybrid Seed Association (PHHSA) Chairman Shahzad Ali Malik said that crop production remained good during the current calendar year while the weather also supported the agriculturist. He said all the crops produced better results, but not a bumper production.
FBP President Dr Zafar Hayat while talking to the Business Recorder said that the cotton crop once again missed all its targets and promised purchase price announced by the government could not be fulfilled. The cotton crop was failing due to a lack of proper introduction of technologies and poor seed varieties.
“Corn is a promising and emerging crop that also faces difficulty on the price front. Prices crashed from the Rabi crop, prices went down from Rs3000/maund to Rs1900/maund, and the prices are still nose-diving. Unfortunately, the government still is insensitive about the corn price situation,” he added.
Regarding wheat farmers, Dr Zafar said that we were fortunate to get good yields and got government fixed prices, but the open market was much higher than what farmers were getting. Once again, the beneficiaries were hoarders and flour mills, he alleged.
Overall, the government utterly failed to formulate policies to address issues like seed technologies, the availability of fertilizer, and marketing, so the year was not good for farmers. The potential in the agriculture sector is huge, for the country as well as for the farmers. Unless the government realizes this and addresses this opportunity on a serious note, we will keep missing the natural opportunity which the country possesses, he concluded.
Shahzad Malik stressed the need for research institutions in Pakistan should focus on cotton and wheat, as an increase in the yields of these two crops would help Pakistan get rid of imports. He said there was a need for collaboration between our institutions and international research institutions to increase the yield of agricultural commodities. He said this happened in the rice crop, and today the yield of the coarse variety was far higher than in the past. Shahzad Malik said there was a need to consult basic research of foreign institutes and then carry out applied research in Pakistan to produce seeds with higher yields following the local climatic conditions.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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