A meeting on Cotton and Wheat was held, Minister NFSR, Syed Fakhar Imam chaired the meeting. Agriculture Minister Sindh, Mr. Ismail Rahoo, Secretary Agriculture Sindh, Agri Minister Balochistan Mr. Eng. Zamarak, secretary Agriculture KP and Secretary Agriculture Punjab participated the meeting.
Minister Sindh said cotton will be planted on 600,000 ha. So far sowing on 50% area has been completed in lower Sindh. Showed their concern on high input prices esapcaillay DAP, Urea and pesticides. He also showed his concernes on seed quality .
Secretary Agriculture Punjab said the cotton will be planted on 4 million acres or 1.62 million acres, so far sowing on 13% area has been completed. He informed the subsidy program of provincial government on cotton seed, and fettilizers. Punjab seed council has approved 15 new cotton varieties.Subsidy on whitefly pesticides will be disubursed throough Kisan Card in southern Punjab. The provincial government is also working on trace and track of cotton seed so that quality seed can be reached to growers.
Minister for Agriculture Balochistan informed that they are going to expand cotton cultivation on 20 districts. He informed the cotton quality of balochistan is much higher than other provinces. Balochistan is the first province to produce organic cotton with non -GMO seeds. They desires federal government’s help in bio fertilizers, bio pesticides and related machines and field equipment. He said balochisn has a vast potential of cotton cultivation.
Secretary Agriculture KP said southern distrcits of KP like DIKhan, Banu, Tank and Luky marwat are best suited for cotton cutluvation. However, cotton in KP has competition with sugarcane. And wanted supported federal goverenmt to set up a ginning factory in the area to address the marketing issue of the province. He further added KP has potential to produce cotton seed for rest of the country, this way value added cotton production can compete with sugarcane.
The provinces informed the federal minister that punjba will produce 19.6 million of wheat, Sindh 4 millin tons, balochistan 1 million and KP will produce 1.2 million tones of wheat. As an conservative estimate, in total 24.8 million tones of wheat will be produced by the country. Agricutlure minister Sindh affirmed that they will participate in the subsidy program offered by the federal government as CM Sindh has approved the summary and will write to the M/o NFSR in next week.
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