Wheat Development Commissioner in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA) Dr Shakeel Ahmad Khan told APP here Friday that wheat crop harvesting was in full swing in the Sindh province where over 1,15000 tons of the commodity has been procured.
He informed that the harvesting has also started in Punjab Province where as the procurement campaign in the province would be started from April 20 all across the wheat growing areas.
He further informed that all arrangements were finalized to procure wheat on official fixed rates of Rs. 950 per 40 kg and facilitate the growers for better returns of their produce.
In this regard, he said that Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) has established about 200 wheat procurement centers all across the Punjab province.
"As much as 1.3 million tons of wheat would be procured by PASSCO during the current wheat procurement campaign for the year 2010-11," he added.
These centers have been established in 10 zones of the Punjab Province including Hafazabad, Pakpatan, Veharrie, Bawalnagar, Khaniwal, Lodhrran, Allipur, Khanpur and Khairpur districts.
Initially, the corporation has arranged sacks for packing of 800,000 tons of wheat while the sacks for packing remaining wheat would be purchased next month, he added.
He informed that the provincial government in line with the federal government has deviced a strategy to provide 200 bags per farmer at an average of 10 bags per acre for small and medium growers.
The large scale farmers having land of more than 50 acre would be provided 500 bags per farmer adding that when these bags would be filled by the growers they would be provided more bags for grain packing, he added.
The sacks would be provided after the land certification of revenue department to ensure transparency adding that only those farmers would be entertained who provide the certificate of land.
To a question, he said that normal rainfalls persisting short spell does not effect the crop adding that any long spell of rains may harm the crop and as such no spell was forecasted.
Dr. Shakeel said that normal rainfall would help for preparing the land for next crop sowing which would also be started by next month for cultivating major and minor crops including cotton, maize, sugarcane and pulses in the country.
It may be recalled that this year wheat crop has been sown over 8.8 million hectare of land in the country to fulfill the domestic consumption which has fallen by 3.5 per cent as compared to the last year sowing.
Wheat crop has been sown over 6.68 million hectare of land in Punjab, while in the Sindh Province about 1.08 million hectare of land are under wheat crop, he said.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK) the wheat crop has been sown over 0.73 million hectare and in Baluchistan it was cultivated over 0.32 million hectare.
Meanwhile, the officials of Ministry of Food and Agriculture informed that current wheat crop out-look was quit satisfactory in the country adding that it is also expected that output of the crop would also remain satisfactory.
They also expect that bumper wheat crop wa expected in Sindh, where the sowing had surpassed the fixed targets this year.