Our government is making efforts to bring the country towards self sufficiency in food. This was said by Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam during National Assembly (NA) session. He was addressing on Friday. Federal Minister Fakhar Imam lauded the efforts of speaker for his efforts in revival of agriculture and for making a special committee on agri products He was of the point of view that during budget, PM Imran khan stressed on agriculture sector’s revival for it can contribute in our economy a big time. Syed Fakhar Imam said due to covid 19 and some other elements we are unable to achieve the targets set for this year He said that a big challenge we are facing in agri sector is the water management. We do not have enough water reservoirs due to which a lot of water is wasted. After Mangla & Terbela we were in dire need for a big dam, the inauguration of Bhasha Dam is a very useful step. He added that our water supply system through canals is also an outdated system and we have not mentioned it as well. Improvement in water supply system is very much needed. The minister stressed upon the capacity building of our farmers. He said that we have to identify the loopholes in our agri system to find out how we can improve our production for short term & long term period. The Federal Minister further said that we have to uplift our research centres for all kind of crops if it is low valued, medium or high valued crops. He said Researches are costly and we have not funded our research centres well enough. The trial period of research varies from crop to crop and it takes a long period to do a quality research due to which it takes time to reach the farmers. Syed Fakhar Imam made it clear that after the 18th amendment provinces have been given most of the authorities. It is required that both the canter & provinces come together to deal with the challenges in this sector. He mentioned that once Punjab Seed Corporation was supplying 30% of cotton seeds & 20% wheat seed for all Pakistan and it was of a very good quality. The revival in quality seed is very much important. Subsidy on seeds should be given to farmers by federal & provinces both. He said that our cotton crop production has dropped a big time.
We are trying our best for the acquisition of quality & purity of seeds. We have neglected quality of seeds for a long time. It is time that we should move to quality conscious agriculture production and we should make sure that the seeds are available for farmers at a reasonable price. We have to increase the yield & quality of our cotton which will help boost our exports. Our warehouse for storage is also a very big problem we are facing. We have very outdated storage systems. Public & private sectors both should come up together for the better storage houses. We haven’t focused on quality marketing; we have to be more focused in this area to boost our exports. The fiscal package announced by the government will bring relief for the farmers. He said that we are in discussion with Minister for Power Division, Mr. Omer Ayub regarding electricity subsidy on 3, 10,000 tube wells.
*-*-*-*
