Declining prices: governments weigh up option to protect agriculture sector

The federal government and provinces on Wednesday weighed various options to protect the agriculture sector from declining prices of agriculture products in the international market. An official said that a consultative meeting on agriculture products and Basmati rice was held on Wednesday with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the chair and various options were discussed during the meeting.
The official said the issue of high costs of agricultural inputs was discussed. He said the Prime Minister directed to devise proposals to bring down the cost of inputs to improve per acre yield and profitability after he was given a detailed presentation on the present situation as well as on future scenarios. Secretary Food Department of Sindh government told Business Recorder that the meeting was a follow-up of a meeting held in August. He said the meeting has not taken any decision and decided to hold another meeting in this regard to further discuss the proposals.
He said the decline in agriculture products prices in the international market has created problems of exports. He said that farmers are suffering due to high input prices at home and low output prices. Secretary Agriculture Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government said a committee was constituted by the Prime Minister to suggest as to how to support small farmers. The meeting discussed implications of the government interventions to manage the price fluctuations while keeping in view the interests of both producers and consumers.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister''s office after the meeting says that the surplus stocks of agricultural products in international and domestic markets have put pressure on the support price mechanism and profitability of the agricultural production has been affected.
The Ministry of National Food Security and Research informed the meeting that in Pakistan agriculture is mainly a small farmers'' business, living in rural areas and any price shock has damaging effects on millions of small farmers earning their livelihood from agriculture sector. The meeting agreed that the Pakistani agriculture is suffering from global phenomenon and a strategy is required to come out of this economic situation.
The Planning Commission organised a forum on agriculture pricing trends and its possible implications on rural economy in August 2015. The forum presented a set of recommendations for consideration by the government on Wednesday''s meeting. The meeting deliberated in detail on the recommendations of the forum regarding problems faced by the producers of major crops like rice, sugarcane, cotton, wheat and vegetables. The Prime Minister directed that the Ministry of National Food Security may initiate measures to attract investment in high-tech seed industry and asked if any legislation is required to do that. The Prime Minister also directed to develop standards for use of agricultural machinery to improve its efficiency. Provincial governments were directed to initiate a process for implementation of the recommendations for the agriculture forum.
The meeting was attended by Engineer Khurram Dastgir, Minister of Commerce, Muhammad Ishaq Dar, Minister for Finance, Riaz Hussain Pirzada, Minister for IPC; Sikandar Hayat Bosan, Minister for National Food Security; Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Planning and Sartaj Aziz, Adviser to the PM, federal secretary National Food security, Secretary agriculture from Punjab, Sindh, KPK and Balochistan.