Sindh produces vegetables in a fairly large quantity with sufficient trade surplus to cater to some of Punjab and the regional export markets’ demand.

This year, for instance, the province had a good onion crop and it is being exported on a sizeable scale, despite the fact that the crop was hit by sprouting (re-germination) and farmers didn’t get a very good price. It was after a gap of two years that Sindh had secured a decent onion crop since in last two years rains and floods had damaged it.

“This year we exported around 200,000 tonnes of onion to Malaysia, Colombo, UAE, Doha, Bahrain and Muscat and around Rs500 to Rs800 per maund price was paid to wholesalers”, says Asif Ahmed, a vegetable exporter. He adds that in 2009-10 around 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes of onion were exported.

Besides onions, growing chillies is another profitable venture for the growers in Sindh. Recent reports indicate that farmers who grow chillies are even trying to control aflotoxin — a problem that had been hitting the crop for a long time — and have achieved success through a different drying technique. This year’s crop fetched them an average price of Rs4000 to Rs5000 per maund. The per acre production of chillies is reported between 40 to 45 maunds, which according to farmers, is a decent output.

Chilli growers are cultivating two varieties — Nagina and Kunri-I — and they feel that there is a need to come up with more varieties including a hybrid one.

A noted chilli grower, Mian Saleem points out that he had personally sent two containers to Dubai as he managed to control aflotoxin problem in chillies. After the drying process, he got samples tested in a laboratory in Karachi University which indicated a healthy level of aflotoxin. He said he had used a green sheet to spread chillies so that the crop lost touch with soil directly.

“Level of aflotoxin was found to be at 3.6ppb (part per billion), and for Europe’s market it should not be more than 5ppb,” says Saleem. However, he adds, besides change in the process of drying of chillies, more measures are needed to get required results.

In addition to onion and chillies, farmers also grow ladyfinger, eggplant and cauliflower. Ladyfinger which was usually grown in perennial canals area is now being cultivated in non-perennial command area on residual moisture of land — used for rice crop — in lower Sindh, and according to Abdul Majeed Nizamani it is giving good results. Moderate rains have favoured the crop but the pockets where rains were heavy, affected it.

Growers in Sindh, however, are extremely worried about vegetables’ arrival from India while Pakistan is not able to export its crop to the neighbour. This is taking economic toll on the farmers because they find it hard to compete given the fact that the neighbouring country offers heavy subsidy to farmer whereas farmers in Pakistan have to incur huge expenses of inputs.

“Our farmer pays huge amount, say Rs80,000 to Rs100,000, for transporting their produce from Sindh to Punjab and Peshawar. However, Indian vegetable upon reaching Wagah is transported to Peshawar and the rest of Punjab’s market at a transportation cost of Rs4000 to Rs20,000”, says Ahmed.

This put Sindh’s farmers at a losing end. “Of the total tomato production in the country, 70 to 80 per cent comes from Sindh”, Nizamani claims, “If vegetables from Sindh reach Punjab before the crop from India does, we remain comfortable with price level. However, if Indian crop arrives in the market before ours does we are bound to suffer. We need to bring our cost of production at par with India”, he says.

Farmers believe that trade surpluses in crops like ladyfinger, onion, chillies and cauliflower have good export potential to India provided local growers get a level playing field.