Technology all the way

Abad Khan
Member of the Farmers Associate Pakistan and President Guava Association

Abad Khan owns three different farms in as many ecological zones in Punjab. He believes that instead of flashy and grandiose ideas, the government should help farmers with technology adoption at the ground level.

For example, incubation centres should be set up where farmers can go and learn about the latest technologies for specific crops. This way they can return and use their knowledge to tackle problems that they face. The government should also try to reach out to farmers individually.

“The soil textures of all of my three farms differ, even within one farm, and usage of fertiliser is linked with this texture. I should be able to upload soil texture and get specific requirements for my farm,” he says. “This was started by the previous government but stopped by the present one. It needs to be restarted. Help for farmers should be GPS enabled rather than based on lengthy paperwork as is done currently,” he added.

No place for food

Chaudhry Maqsood Jutt
President Potato, Vegetable and Fruit Growers Cooperative Society

Storage capacity is a subject of confusion rather than planning asserts Chaudhry Maqsood Jutt. The government does not have credible figures of different crop area, crop production or storage.

For example, the provincial government has been insisting that potato production is at 4.3 million tonnes. The figure could be well over 10m tonnes. Similarly, there are no accurate storage figures available. Okara district, the main potato producing area, has over 2.5m tonnes of storage capacity, which fills to the brim every season.

In the last few years, new storage was built by investors from Sargodha. While the capacity is sufficient there are operational issues. Firstly, the cost of storage has become a deterrent. Storage owners charge Rs450 per bag for a season. Cost of a bag is Rs200 and labour charges add another Rs100. This adds Rs6.5 per kg to the cost.

With exports slowing down, for the last two years no farmer has been able to recoup this cost, said Mr Jutt. Storage charges are prohibitive because initial investment has been massive at around Rs2,000 per bag. This added up to Rs60m, excluding cost of land. Cost of running storage is exorbitant as well, mainly due to electricity.

To make matters worse, storage owners do not take responsibility for potatoes rotting in case of electricity failure. There is no insurance system in place. Entire stores of produce have gone to waste due to this. At Rs3,000 per bag, potato seeds are costly. If 100 bags of seed rot, famers suffer irreparable losses. Thus, instead of building storage capacity, the regularisation of existing capacity is needed.

Taxation: discriminatory and arbitrary

Sarfraz Ahmad Khan
Vice President of Kissan Board Pakistan

A practising farmer and former member of the Federal Board of Revenue, Sarfraz Ahmad Khan says that the current taxation system is discriminatory, arbitrary and loaded against farmers.

For example, let’s take the case of exemption. For non-agricultural income the first Rs400,000 earned is tax-free whereas the corresponding amount for the farmer is only Rs80,000 — five times less than that of businesspersons.

Similarly the progressive rates work against the farmer’s interest. For a slab of Rs100,000, farmers have to pay five per cent of the income. Similarly, for agricultural income up to Rs200,000, farmers have to pay Rs5,000 plus 7.5pc on over Rs100,000. Going further up the slabs, at Rs300,000 of agricultural income, farmers are charged Rs22,500 plus 15pc on income above Rs300,000. On the other hand, non-agricultural income is not taxed for any of these slabs.

The disparity is further evident when the tax rate for non-agricultural income is analysed. For the slab of Rs400,000-800,0000 tax is only a lump sum rate of Rs1,000. For the next slab, above Rs800,000-1,200,000, those with non-agricultural income must pay only Rs2,000. This is indicative of how the dice is loaded against farmers.

What complicates the issue is the income assessment mechanism. Farmers’ income varies from region to region, season to season and crop to crop. The revenue bureaucracy is simply not trained in such assessment mechanism, resulting in discrimination and arbitrariness. A system of progressive per acre taxes should be put in place instead.

A woman at the farm

Batool Kauser
Farmer

Batool Kauser was rushed to the civil hospital when she fell unconscious due to heat, the fumes rising from the chemical fertiliser she was applying, and weak health.

Taking care of the family’s five acres of land since the death of her husband a couple of years ago, Ms Kauser is amongst the 68 per cent illiterate female farm workers. Even before her husband’s death, she had been working in the fields shoulder to shoulder to save labour costs.

A mother of three, she says fainting is not the only hazard at the farm. Without day care centres, babysitters, or a joint family system, children have to be carried to the fields. Proximity to hazardous agricultural chemicals, snake bites, and stray dogs are all threats to children as well as their mothers.

Harassment at the hands of male workers and landlords is common due to the women’s subservient position. Unlike industrial or commercial sectors, there is no help at hand in the form of nearby colleagues, she narrates.

During her husband’s lifetime, she knew little about micro-credit facilities. After his death, fear of getting trapped in the vicious cycle of interest made her depend on loans from friends and family. Furthermore, a social restriction on women’s mobility prevents her from attending meetings and signing (thumb impression) required documents to obtain formal loans.

She admits that she had little control over decision making during her husband’s lifetime. Similar to other women workers, she was involved in ‘manual’ tasks such as digging, stacking of bales, sowing seed, plucking vegetables, and peeling sugar cane. Her husband would do the ‘heavier’ and somewhat more technical work, such as ploughing, watering, tractor driving, and dealing with heavy agricultural machinery.

The country’s step-children

Mahr Ikramullah Lak
Farmer

“Forget funds and other facilities, we (the farmers) do not even receive guidance or technical support from the government,” bemoans Mahr Ikramullah Lak.

Agricultural extension services provide knowledge of scientific research and application through farmer education. “Extension services men rarely visit us. If we approach them ourselves to seek guidance, they just direct us to certain dealers for pesticides. But the way the government talks, it appears that all state resources have been put at our disposal,” he laments.

Mr Lak asserts that farmers get poor returns because of lack of storage capacity. The government provides storage for strategic wheat stocks only, while talk of building storage for other crops remains just talk. There are also no markets where farmers can sell their produce directly without paying [commission] to the middlemen.

Farmers have to sell their produce at the earliest to pay for farm inputs bought on deferred payment of the crop. Investors take advantage of this fact and purchase at low rates to sell at exorbitant prices during the season.

Poor training and lack of technology lead to losses before and after production. Absence of crop insurance results in heavier losses when the weather turns hostile. “We face up to 30 per cent production wastage on normal days. This figure goes up to 50pc in case of rain and thunderstorm, and as high as 70pc in case of hail,” he says. Yet promises of the crop insurance scheme have yet to be fulfilled.

Farm labour is another factor which Mr Lak believes will hit the farm sector hard in days to come. Previously, workers would themselves approach a grower a month before harvesting of wheat against 80kg per acre. But now they are not available at double the rate as most have left for urban centres in search of better opportunities, he adds.

Common sense cultivation

Dr Anjum Ali
Director General of Punjab Agriculture Department (Extension)

Grow food not plants and plant only those trees that bear fruit. This is the best option to ensure food security with available resources, believes agricultural scientist Dr Anjum Ali.

Referring to the prime minister’s one billion tree plantation target, he says the programme should not just take care of lungs but also people’s stomachs. In an agrarian society, while availability of food is not an issue, nutrition and affordability are.

Efforts such as soil analysis are being undertaken by the public sector for natural fortification of grains. When completed, it would allow application of micro-nutrients like zinc in soil found deficient of it. To increase affordability, Dr Ali calls for focus on enhanced crop yields, diversification and value addition so that cost of production may be reduced.

He believes that nutrition standards should be set in accordance with local tastes and consumer behaviour instead of blindly following international standards. For example, while people here do not consume as much meat as they do in developed countries, ghee consumption, which is also a source of animal fat, is higher in Pakistan. Forcing consumers to adopt world standards will not improve the nutritious value of their food.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 22nd, 2019