The wide spread attacks on standing crops in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh by Locust Storms will have certainly damaged the output of cereals and other crops. The country is already confronted with food shortages, necessitating the import of wheat and sugar. The losses caused to wheat crop will be quite substantiation and supply shortages will be met by massive import of this commodity. ECC has approved the import of 300,000 tomes of wheat to meet the demand for the current fiscal year. Next year bigger quantities of wheat import will be essential.
Federal Minister for National Food Security and Agriculture Research MakhdoomKhusroBakhtiatr visited the locust hit area of PipliPahar in Okara district along with NDMA Chairman. He admitted that great damage has been done by locust attacks to standing crops. However, situation has been brought under control in 85 percent areas and federal government has declared state of emergency to deal with this threat.
How can the menace of recurring locust attacks can be combated when successive governments did not bother to set up insecticide industry in the country? In the decade of 60s not only insecticides had been imported for free insecticide aerial spray on Rabi and Kharif crops but few units of producing this item of crops protection had also been set up.. These units of private sector were nationalized by Z.A Bhutto government and later closed. The PML-N governments always boasted of making Pakistan world tiger. But setting up insecticide industry and raw material industry for it had never been figured neither in Prime Minister’s Programme 2010 nor in vision 2025, brain Childs of former Panning Minister AhsanIqbal. On the contrary, import of insecticides was allowed from India, an uncertain source of supply. The suspension of trade relations with India in August last year has created dearth of insecticides. No alternate source of import was explored and reached out, leaving the standing crops at the mercy of insects, pests, locusts and diseases.
