FAISALABAD, Oct 13: Governor Salmaan Taseer has called food security another area of concern for the country after national security and stressed the need for a joint session of parliament to discuss rising food challenges.

Mr Taseer said this at the inaugural ceremony of a two-day international symposium on modern approaches and techniques in agriculture to enhance food security in Pakistan on Monday at the University of Agriculture Faisalabad. He said food security was a crucial challenge and it would become more important than oil in the coming years. He said that Pakistan had best lands, water resources and diversification of climatie to meet its food requirements but rapid climatic changes and depletion of natural resources were major challenges.

He said Pakistan was going through stalled agricultural productivity due to the structural issues such as poor crop management, use of low quality seed, poor agricultural infrastructure, high post harvest losses, limited research and practical application and inadequate funding for research and development. Besides, he said climatic change was already causing irrevocable damage to Pakistan.

The governor urged the UAF administration to launch agriculture related management courses to overcome the losses caused by mismanagement at different stages right from land leveling to marketing and export of agriculture commodities. He asked scientists to submit their recommendations to cope with the challenges of food crisis.

Earlier, VC UAF Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan said population growth and climatic changes had posed a serious threat to the agriculture sector necessitating a new paradigm shift in agriculture strategies and policies.

He said he was concerned at Rs6 billion losses due to poor management in various sector of agriculture and said that scientists had to come up with viable recommendations to overcome these losses.

The governor also talked to the faculty members of the Government College University (GCU) and said the government would not tolerate any sort of politics in educational institutes.

He asked Vice-Chancellor GCU Dr Arif Ali Zaidi to launch a programme for enrichment of the Punjabi language. The governor announced the establishment of Sultan Bahu Chair in the GCU and he also pledged Rs6 million for this purpose.