TUNNEL farming is finally getting increased attention of the provincial governments and its popularity among growers is set to rise within the next few years.

Initially individual farmers had resorted to tunnel farming in mid 2000s, primarily in Punjab but also in Sindh. But the government support remained absent for a long time — and the trend to cultivate vegetables in tunnel farms grew slowly.

However, in this fiscal year’s budget, provinces have made an attempt to promote tunnel farming either through promises of financial incentives or by promising tunnel farmers to provide necessary training and technical support.

Punjab where tunnel farming covers no less than 200,000 acres of land has included an incentive scheme in its FY15 agricultural budget. In the KP budget, too, separate allocation has been made for this purpose.

Sindh and Balochistan are also working on plans to boost production of vegetables in semi-arid areas through tunnel farming, officials claim.

In June, the Punjab government signed a cooperation deal with a Turkish firm that envisages Turkish support in five specific areas of agriculture including tunnel farming.

Farmers, who have seen their earnings of other minor crops like pulses drop due to a variety of reasons, are growing fond of producing high-yield, off-season veggies in tunnel farms and earn big profits. And as the super markets spread across Pakistan and awareness about health benefits of vegetables keeps growing, farmers don’t need to bother about transporting vegetables grown in tunnel farms to faraway places. Local markets consume them easily, which cuts the cost of transportation.

Officials say a well-cared tunnel farm enhances the per-acre yield of veggies by up to 500pc, which should give farmers enough profit to continue their business

Since tunnel farming technology gives much higher produce of veggies than those grown in open fields and their quality is also better because of direct intake of nutrients via feeding tubes, such vegetables can be sold at high prices. Farmers in districts Arifwala, Vehari and Mailsi in Punjab have long been engaged in thus business and now the trend is catching up in Faisalabad, Jhang, Multan and Rahim Yar Khan as well, media reports suggest.

Farmers engaged in tunnel farming say that setting up a tunnel farm requires capital cost of Rs1.0-1.5m, adding that maintaining the right temperature and humidity level in a tunnel farm often soars in the absence of regular power supply which force them to use diesel-run generators. They point that in Sindh, as opposed to Punjab, farmers prefer low tunnels (i.e. the ones that accommodate low height rows of steel structures covered with polythene sheets). They say the cost of running these tunnel farms are lower than that of the walk-through and high tunnels, the first providing enough space between two series of rows for growers’ movement, and the second housing multi-storey rows of artificial soil beds for veggies.

One important thing that all vegetables growers, in general, and tunnel farmers, in particular, are concerned about is imports of vegetables from India and China. This makes it difficult for them to earn decent profits cover the high cost of operating tunnel farms.

But officials say that a well-cared tunnel farm enhances the per-acre yield of veggies by up to 500pc which, even after accounting for all expenses should give farmers enough profit to continue their business.

Irrespective of the problems associated with tunnel farming it is the most efficient system of growing vegetables, officials say.

In tunnel farming, use of water efficiency increases by 250-275pc in such vegetables like tomato, cucumber and bell-pepper. (This efficiency is measured in the ratio of the total yield to the total water consumed by the crop). Currently, apart from these vegetables cabbages, egg-plants, reddish, carrots and parsley etc are also being grown in tunnel farms. But the provincial agriculture departments have made no arrangements to collect data on actual production of vegetables in tunnel farms, one reason for which is that the entire country-wise output of such vegetables is guesstimated to be less than 1pc.

With climatic changes and negligence of decades taking a toll on Pakistan’s irrigation system, the need to grow veggies in tunnel farms is very obvious.

Farmers complain that tunnel farming being on the list of eligible areas of concessional agricultural lending, banks are still shy of doing this. Officials of state-run National Bank insist, however, that they have been routinely lending money to farmers for erection of tunnel farms.

Moving forward, as linkages between rural and urban economies deepen—thanks to quick expansion of ICT and growing involvement of urban investors in rural entrepreneurship opportunities, urban and rural youth can team up to undertake such projects like tunnel farming.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business ,July 13th, 2015

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