Travelling on the 17.5km long Sir Aga Khan Jheeruk Maulla Katiar bridge between Tando Mohammad Khan and Thatta on a spring is a pleasure. Bright yellow fields of sunflowers that line the route make the journey more pleasant. Further into Thatta, more sunflower fields run parallel to the roads.

The sunflower crop was ready for harvest in March in Thatta and Badin districts and parts of Tando Mohammad Khan. However, sunflower performance has been dismal over the last several years. It lost acreage drastically after attaining impressive figures a decade back — 264,964ha and 341,641 metric tonnes of production in 2010-11. Now it stands at 34,936ha with 36,244 metric tonnes in 2022-23.

Fodder crops, fruits like watermelon, wheat and mustard have made inroads in the sunflower area after growers faced issues relating to the market and yields of this oilseed. Nabi Bux Sathio, Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) vice president, was associated with sunflower cultivation in 2007-2012. He has given it up now.

“Market issues are serious as neither market offers an adequate price nor the government fixes support price. Mustard is increasingly cultivated as an oilseed crop with better price prospects,” he said. According to him, when sunflower cultivation witnessed a boom a decade back, the government supported it, but farmers started losing interest gradually as incentives were discontinued. Its cultivation might have increased and would be beneficial in lessening edible oil’s import bill.

Focusing on growing sunflowers in Sindh would help reduce the country’s dependence on imported palm oil

Sunflower needs better land preparation and takes around five months to mature compared to 90 days for mustard. If mustard gets Rs8,500 per maund with lesser input cost, sunflower gets Rs7,000 per maund despite more investment. “If it is incentivised, growers can turn to it again,” he said.

His Sindh Abadgar Board counterpart, Mahmood Nawaz Shah, agrees. Even olive was being grown in Punjab after several years of efforts, but Sindh is unable to capitalise on sunflower after hitting impressive acreage.

“We can diversify crops if sunflower is focused upon, but we need a policy initiative for it. Did anyone look at why such huge acreage is lost?” he said. Sunflower has an edge over mustard as it can be grown in different periods from October to February.

The real potential in sunflower cultivation remained, however, unexploited, and the decline in acreage has gone unchecked. Sindh didn’t join the federally funded five-year Rs10.963 billion National Oilseed Enhancement Programme (NOEP), launched in 2019 under the Rs309.7bn, the prime minister’s National Agriculture Emergency Programme (NAEP).

A subsidy of Rs5,000 per acre for growing seed/inputs and 50 per cent on the purchase of oilseed machinery was to be provided to growers.

It was a 60-40 share equation between federal and provincial governments back then. Sindh belatedly decided to participate in the project, which will end in June 2024. Sources said Sindh sent its PC-I to share its cost provided the federal government releases the share first. The issue, however, faced procedural delays.

The matter lies with Planning Commission (PC) as it requires a nod from Central Development Working Party. If the project is extended two years, Sindh could get its lion’s share as Rs8.5bn is still left unspent out of the total allocation.

Under NOEP, oilseeds were to be boosted by increasing sunflower and canola cultivation on 2-4 million acres and growing sesame on 0.5m acres. Growing 10 maunds per acre could save Pakistan $1bn in imports. NAEP aimed to achieve increased wheat yields by seven maunds/acre, thus freeing up to 2-4m acres of wheat to be diverted to canola and sunflower. This wasn’t achieved.

For NAEP, all provinces were taken on board, but Sindh didn’t participate despite being a major sunflower-growing province which was a vital component of NOEP. It was seen as a good opportunity for oilseed growers of Sindh, for 440,000 acres (55pc) of total sunflower targets were allocated to Sindh. Sindh’s reluctance to join it was largely due to friction between PTI’s federal and PPP’s provincial governments at that time.

Targets of sunflower remain unmet otherwise, it would have helped enhance oilseeds production significantly and reduced dependence on imports, saving foreign exchange. The fourth year of the project is underway, and it will end in June 2024. Therefore, there is a greater need to revive the Sindh component of the project by completing all necessary procedures.

Punjab and Sindh have maximum allocations besides physical targets compared to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. NOEP was said to have achieved targets of the increased area under canola, rapeseed/mustard and sesame as well as production.

The area and production of sesame increased significantly, especially in Punjab. Sesame exports stood at $215m, the highest ever in 75 years of history. Sesame’s area has increased from 250,000 acres to 650,000 acres in Punjab.

Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) former chairman Dr Yusuf Zafar — who was associated with the programme’s policy issues as head of his organisation — said that the then federal minister Jehangir Tarin had believed 2m acres could be spared for oilseed crops by increasing per acre wheat yields to 35 mounds from 26 mounds per acre. Per acre average productivity, however, didn’t increase.

“Oilseed crops enhancement component was aimed at achieving import substitution. Edible oil worth $5.3bn has so far been imported when we are running short of foreign exchange reserves. Even the cost of palm oil’s import has increased from $639 per tonne in 2018 to a whopping $1,275 per tonne in 2022,” Dr Zafar said.

According to him, farmer-market linkage doesn’t exist, and sunflower is an exhaustive crop that consumes soil nutrients. Research-oriented steps are required as its input cost is high due to imported seed usage, which remains expensive and makes it less profitable,” he observed.

“The government needs to come up with polity initiative to ensure contract growing for sunflower by companies to have more oilseed to lessen dependence on edible oil’s import,” he proposed.

Punjab has received most of its share under NOEP. Officials believe the oilseeds project could be extended in view of its achievement. The area under mustard is also said to have increased from 450,000 acres to 1m acres in Punjab alone.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, April 17th, 2023