ISLAMABAD: The high-powered Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) met on Thursday to set production targets for Rabi crops for the 2022-23 season and fixed a wheat production target at 28.4 million tonnes, to be grown on an area of 9.3m hectares.

The wheat production target for Punjab has been fixed at 21m tonnes, while Sindh’s target has been fixed at 4m tonnes. The target for Sindh has been set in anticipation that the flood water will recede from the crop fields during the sowing season.

Target for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is 1.8m tonnes, and 1.57m tonnes for Balochistan. The targets for gram, potato, onion and tomato have been fixed at 560,000 tonnes, 6029,000 tonnes, 2422,000 tonnes and 622,000 tonnes, respectively.

The committee meeting, presided over by Minister for National Food Security and Research Tariq Bashir Cheema, was informed by the Federal Seed Certification and Resea­rch Department that the availability of certified wheat seed had increased by 14pc as compared to the last year.

Availability of certified wheat seed has gone up by 14pc, FCA meeting told

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Cheema said that due to floods, the entire crops in Sindh and Balochistan had been damaged. To cope with this situation of unavailability of essential food items, the ministries of national food security and commerce facilitated the import of essential food items on a fast-track basis to maintain the supply at reasonable prices to consumers.

A senior official of the national food security ministry told Dawn that fertilisers, including urea and DAP, were in sufficient quantity and wheat growers would not face any shortage of it during the time of its application, and its availability would remain stable.

The official said he expected a good crop, particularly in Punjab where moisture in the soil suited the wheat crop.

An official of the Irsa advisory committee informed the meeting said Irsa anticipated a shortfall of 18pc in the availability of water for irrigation during the Rabi season for which 30.25m acres feet (MAF) of water had been allocated for the season. However, the prevailing weather conditions were supportive and the shortage of water would be manageable, he said.

The meeting was informed that weather outlook for the October-December, 2022, the period had suggested that the amount of rainfall was likely to be below normal all over the country. Northern Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad and Jammu Kashmir were likely to receive below-normal rainfall while near-normal rainfall was expected in the rest of the country during the period.

The committee was further informed that sugarcane production for 2022-23 was estimated at 81.64m tonnes from an area of 1.32m hectares.

The rice production for 2022-23 is estimated at 5.53m tonnes from an area of 2.99m hectares, showing a decrease of 2.4pc and 34.51pc in area and production, respectively, over the targets.

The maize production for 2022-23 is estimated at 9.24m tonnes from an area of 1.61m hectares, showing an increase of 21.02pc and 28.86pc over the targets.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2022