Realising the importance of agriculture in GDP contribution, a mega project is being launched for boosting per acre yield, removing marketing inefficiencies, and facilitating transition to high value agriculture products production. The project will provide maximum benefits to small farmers, who have been on the receiving end. The World Bank had agreed to provide finances of $300 million few years ago for launching the project in February 2018, but it did not materialise due to skewed priorities of the government, neglecting the deep rooted crisis of this sector.
The project titled, “Strategic Market for Agriculture and Rural Transformation,” SMART shall now be launched in food the basket province of Punjab in December. Salient features of the project include giving easy access to small farmers to get quality farm input on subsidized rates; gradual transition to high value agriculture such as livestock, dairy farming, poultry and fisheries; introducing crops insurance system; and increasing public sector investment in growing climate smart crops. As the project will cover small and subsistence farming, therefore, registration process of small farmers has been started and 1.2 million farmers have been registered so far. The target of 90 percent registration shall be completed by 2022.
SMART project also envisages setting up modern storage facilities with public-private partnership for storage and preservation of cereal crops such as wheat, maize and rice. If this important component of the project does materialse, it will save reasonable amount of fiscal resources for providing soft loans to small farmers, enabling them to switch over to high value agriculture.
It was the abnormally high input cost and deprivation of small farmers of their due share of water resources that aggravated the crisis in agriculture. The issuance of Kissan Card will ensure greater transparency in providing subsidy to the deserving farmers and putting in place digital monitoring system for resource allocation and irrigation water availability.
Farmers of subsistence farming face great challenges like shifting of cropping pattern, high input cost, non-availability of water at a proper time and above all manipulative practices of cartel mafia at the time of selling out their products. The successful implementation of the project on time will address these challenges to greater extent. Launching of such useful project is worth emulation for small provinces like Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, wherein majority of farmers own small land holdings and 1.8 million acre of fertile cultivable land in the southern districts is rain fed.
Shifting of cropping pattern is inevitable due climate change impact as Pakistan has now slotted fifth most vulnerable country in the Climate Risk Index 2019 of Germanwatch. It merits mention here that 25 percent of cotton crop was destroyed last year by heat wave in the province of Sind alone. Cotton production target of 15 million bales was set but a shortfall of 5million bales occurred.
Over the years, agriculture research is getting a raw deal. Most of the research centers have been rendered redundant. High yield varieties of seeds, compatible with changed weather pattern, could not be evolved. It has resulted in greater dependence on importing genetically modified seeds, which are very expensive. The import mafia always prevail in decision making, which is evident from the bitter fact that not even a single refinery for extracting fine quality of oil from the locally produced oil seeds of canola and sunflower could be set up. How long country can afford import of palm oil and canola oil worth billions of dollars for its ghee industry?
