HYDERABAD, April 10: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture has expressed grave concern over acute shortage of irrigation water and said despite assurances given by Indus River System Authority (Irsa) that it will release water by April 1 Sindh has not received any water so far.
The chamber’s weekly meeting on Sunday presided over by Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah, a prominent agriculturist, demanded the government ask the authority to release water to Sindh without further delay.
The meting observed that the officials posted at procurement centres set up by the Food Department were buying wheat from traders instead of growers.
Moreover, the department had not yet started supplying gunnysacks to the growers, the meeting complained and urged the government direct the department to supply gunnysacks to the growers and purchase wheat directly from them.
The meeting demanded the government appoint Nazar Hussain Mahar as secretary agriculture as it said Mr Mahar was well-versed in agriculture and knew well about the growers’ problems.
Syed Qamaruzzaman opposed the construction of all dams on River Indus. He said the ministers were in the habit of issuing political statements without realising their repercussions.
LECTURE: Prof (Dr) Rajab Memon has urged the government and planners to pay attention to agricultural economy by training farmers to help them in capacity building, which in turn will give a boost to the country’s overall economy.
Improvement in agricultural economy would also help reduce poverty, said Dr Rajab who is the Higher Education Commission’s Merit Professor at the Centre of Rural Development Communication (CRDC), University of Sindh, and a former vice-chancellor of the Agriculture University, Tandojam.
Dr Rajab said in a lecture on “Appropriate policy and investment to meet WTO challenges in agriculture,” an appropriate mix of trade policies, structural reforms, social development budget and investment and supported services infrastructure were required to meet WTO challenges and help agriculture lead the country to an export-oriented sustainable development.
He urged planners to lay emphasis on a single crop region and promote competitive and diversified agriculture by way of appropriate distribution of inputs and resultant benefits.
Dr Rajab highlighted the importance of research in agriculture and information dissemination along with seed development, rationalization of imports, permitted levels of protection and innovative value-added exports, and said the research needed investment which was not enough at present.
The former vice-chancellor said 10 years from now were most important for improvement in economy through agriculture, but regretted the farmers in Pakistan were not well trained in their profession.
On Pakistan’s agricultural profile, Dr Rajab said the country had only 20 per cent of 79.6 million hectare land cultivated. “During next 10 years we must focus on small farms,” he said.
According to Dr Rajab, judicious use and distribution of key inputs, water, fertilizer and seeds were indispensable for improvement in agricultural economy.
He drew the planners’ attention towards livestock and fisheries and advised self-employment for women through microfinancing.
Prominent scholars, Kazi Abdul Majeed, Prof Ghualm Hussain Khaskheli, Dr Lutfullah Mangi, Dr Abdul Latif Tunio, Prof Lal Bux Jaskani, and Prof Ghualm Nabi Sahar took part in a discussion on Pakistani agriculture held earlier.
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