F.P. Report
KARACHI: For more than 70 years, the farmers of Pakistan have fed the nation with their blood, sweat and tears. Though, lip service has always been paid by giving the Agriculture Sector the status of being the “Backbone of Pakistan”, the rewards reaped have seldom trickled down to those who sowed them. This has been the background Fatima Fertilizer Company Ltd. inherited when it started operations in Pakistan in 2011 as part of Fatima Group & Arif Habib collaboration. By introducing a wide variety of specialty fertilizers meant for Pakistani soils under the brand name of “Sarsabz”, the company has strenuously worked on increasing farmer per acre yields and ROI enough to pay-back their fertilizer input costs.
Having established a strong foot-hold for their products, Fatima Fertilizers, has moved-on from being a fertilizer manufacturer to an “Agri Solution Provider”. The foundations for this have been laid by the company’s MOU with the Government of Punjab on Digitalization of Agriculture held at Pakistan AgriTech Expo, 2018. The scope of MOU covers two key initiatives the Government of Punjab is taking in partnership with Fatima Fertilizer – development and dissemination of Agriculture ICT for Farmers and setting up of Farm Mechanization Centers throughout the province.
The digitized agriculture (ICT driven) covers the entire value-chain of agriculture; giving the farmers access to real-time data on crop best management practices, weather and markets. With inclusion of mobile wallet, agri-financing and agri-input sourcing is going to attain major value addition. Fatima Fertilizer’s farmer engagement team and government’s agri 2.0 extension program will jointly provide farmers with soil analysis and recommend balanced use of nutrients and other agri-inputs. This will lead to tremendous cost savings and increase in yields for the farmers who have traditionally relied on generalized formulas for fertilizer and agri-input application.
Furthermore, six farm mechanization centers are being set up in Sargodha, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Okara, Multan and Muzaffargarh. These centers will provide farmers with world-class hi-tech machinery through a service based model at affordable rent. The machinery will be booked by farmers through specialized mobile app; it will automate all labor intensive activities at the farm and compile data for each acre of land. Furthermore, the centers will provide training to farm laborers on usage of machinery and analysis of the data collected, thereby further enriching their jobs and empowering them to make better decisions.
The confluence of Government and private sector entity like Fatima Fertilizer, working together, for the common cause of increasing per acre yield for farmers is a rare occurrence in the history of agriculture in Pakistan, and will set a precedent for many more such public-private partnerships to follow.
