Federal Minister for National Food Security & Research Syed Fakhar Imam attended the National Assembly Standing Committee meeting Chaired by Mr. Rao Ajmal at PARC Headquarters on Tuesday. The committee was briefed about the current Wheat and Cotton position in the country. He said that the major factor for our low output of crops is the outdated seed technology.
The Federal Minister informed the committee that climate change has done a lot of damage to our agriculture production this year. He said that Punjab and Sindh were the most affected provinces of these recent rains and which was also a reason that we could not meet out set production targets in some crops.
While talking to the committee Federal Minister said that cotton is one of our very major crop and it can very much contribute to our national economy. The major problems for not meeting up the cotton production targets are seed quality & white fly attacks. The subsidy on white fly pesticides has started, the experts of our ministry are continuously working on it and we are trying to ensure transparency in this regard.
Syed Fakhar Imam informed the committee that this year we were short of 1.5 MT of wheat target for which we have allowed private entities to import wheat. 430000 tons of the imported wheat has arrived and rest will also reach Pakistan soon. He said that we are in constant contact with the provinces to fix the Minimum Support Price of Wheat.
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