DNA

Islamabad; Pakistan Businesses Forum (PBF) on Wednesday said world is now moving to ubiquitous technologies for the quality monitoring of agricultural produces from farm to fork. In this regard Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Food Security jointly may devise a plan to cater future needs of food security.

Speaking at webinar, PBF Vice President and FPCCI former Chairman on Agriculture, Ahmad Jawad said to ensure safe, affordable food and overcome farmers challenges around low productivity & income, it is critical to transform country agriculture with technology. There is a need to enable farmers to earn sustainable farm incomes and be globally competitive.

“Creating a transformational agricultural policy roadmap requires a collaborative approach between the government, industry, farmers and the society”.

Similarly digital tools in agriculture can help farmers produce with less resources and make data-driven decisions in real-time. New technologies like drones are revolutionising the world of smallholder farming. Drones can help identify weeds, pests and diseases and localise application of agrochemicals.

Jawad suggested that the FPCCI on behalf of industry and the government should also jointly go to sustainable agriculture by popularising the use of science-based good agronomic practices, that are climate-smart and financially viable. Enhanced collaboration will be a critical imperative to transform Pakistan’s agriculture. This will encourage the private sector to come forward with higher investments for innovation.

We must understand that agriculture sector’s development rate had already declined because of locust losses; the pandemic resulted in further lowering the line of development on a graph.

As Pakistan’s Gross Domestic Product growth for the year 2019-2020 was 3.2 percent, with agriculture growing by 2.9 percent, which was two-thirds of the total GDP growth for 2019-2020. Already the slowest GDP growth in Asia, the prediction for the current fiscal is in the negative, i.e., -0.4 percent, with agriculture as the only sector showing positive growth of 2.7 percent according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics 2020.

Now all eyes are set on the federal government. They must come up with targeted input incentives, tailor-made schemes to boost farm production and a specific package for enhancing food exports at a time when a global recession is looming.

The scarcity of water, poor access to bank finance and unbearably high interest rates also have hit farmers. More recently, man-made sugar and wheat crises brought sugar and wheat barons overnight riches while making consumers suffer.

It will be a real test of the federal and provincial governments to rein in those powerful sugar and wheat mafias that resorted to large-scale hoarding in the recent past.