Long-term policy needed to arrest shrinking agricultural sector: SDPI

The monetary value of agriculture sector during the last five years has increased by Rs 810.292 billion to Rs 5,670.77 billion, as it was Rs 4,860.477 billion in 2006. But, in real terms, it is declining. According to monthly economic bulletin of Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), agriculture accounted for 22.47 percent of Pakistan's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2005-6, which declined to 21.4 percent of GDP in 2009-10.
In real terms, during the last five years, it has shrunk. The reason is simple, at the back of public policy; resource mobilisation from rural to urban economy continues unabated and, major investment including foreign direct investment and investment through the annual development programme has been channelised to the non-agriculture sector.
The SDPI report says that in the absence of any time-specific agriculture policy, decisions about important agricultural matters are made at the federal level to cater to the needs, arising from time to time, rather than setting any benchmark in the framework of the policy.
Successive governments over the years have failed in formulating any viable agriculture policy, which has created numerous problems for the local farming sector. It says that the last agriculture policy was given by the then federal minister Sartaj Aziz about two decades ago. The policy was in line with the FAO, which stressed crop maximisation for food security and agriculture income in the long terms.
The next minister with the same portfolio, Majeed Malik, changed the emphasis from the crop side to livestock, resulting in weakening of the policy, which later became ineffective. This virtual absence of policy has given rise to administrative decision making, often taken in isolation to support fiscal maximisation of the federal budget, it said.
Even public investment in the water sector has been allocated to maintain the existing water distribution system, rather than investing on projects for ensuring availability of water for irrigation purposes. The bulletin further says that essential farm inputs like seed and fertiliser are either out of the reach of small farmers or are short of meeting demands.
In 2009-10 only 45 percent of the required certified cotton seed was available before sowing. Available rice seed was sufficient for only 31 percent of the hopefuls. Maize seed to 33 percent, wheat seed to 21.5 percent and oilseeds were available for only 18.9 percent of sowing. The fodder seed was in extreme short supply. It was sufficient for only 10.3 percent of the required needs. The rest of the cultivation was done with contaminated seed, resulting in low yield and disease. This short supply of seed brought overall seed prices higher, bringing profitability of the agriculture sector even lower.
Commenting of agriculture growth and food security issues in Pakistan it said: "The biggest natural resource as an important input to agriculture is water, of which, 59 million acre feet ended up in the Arabian Sea, during the recent floods. This is more than six times the total water storage capacity of the country. Pakistan's agriculture sector largely comprises livestock, and four major crops; wheat, sugarcane, cotton and rice. Pakistan is among the top five dairy producing countries in the world, and the four crops yield sufficient for the domestic staple consumption.
Nevertheless, food insecurity is on the rise, as edible products such as wheat-flour, sugar, milk and meat are far too expensive, to be affordable as staple food items, on a regular basis and in the recommended quantity. Clearly, public policy is at the heart of this strategic insecurity. The current price determining mechanism of the produce chain at different levels is not in line with national goals, most important of which is feeding the population, thus creating food insecurity which can be a catalyst for negative social mobilisation.
Growth in the agriculture sector has decelerated over the last many decades. On average, it was 5.4 percent in 1980s, which came down to 4.4 percent during the decade of nineties, which progressively dwindled to 3.2 percent in the last decade.