Pakistan to export dairy products to China soon: Secy Livestock

LAHORE:Pakistan will soon start exporting dairy products to China through a state-of-the-art farm developed in Sheikhupura to meet the export requirements of China.

This was revealed by Masaud Anwar, Secretary Livestock, at ‘Pakistan Agricultural Coalition’s agri-connections 2024’ here on Wednesday. “A team of China Customs has recently visited our FAM Farm in Sheikhupura and unofficially approved Pakistan for exports of dairy products to China,” said Anwar.

Secretary Agriculture Iftikhar Sahoo said, “The new government has a vision for transformation of our agriculture sector. So, the investment of Rs100 billion has been planned in the agriculture sector for the next two years,” said Sahoo.

He added Rs80 billion will be spent on the modernisation of watercourses in the entire province in the next three years while the government is also in talks with institutes for modern equipment, partnership with academia for research to fund research by private sector and to provide paid internships to graduates from agricultural universities.

Sahoo said that despite being an agricultural country Pakistan imports worth of $5 billion food related items every year while facing serious challenges like crop productivity stagnation, decrease crop area, and loss of agri land to housing projects.

He added that food shortage is a serious issue as with the same agricultural productivity and increasing population the country will be facing the shortage of wheat by 6 million tons by 2033 while the country faces huge crop losses worth $1.5 every year due to outdated farming practices and low-quality farming.

Abrar Hasan, Global CEO of National Foods Limited (NFL), talked about NFL’s ‘Seed to Table’ project which was launched in August 2023 in partnership with progressive farm-managing companies with a vision to reduce the country’s dependency on imported raw materials, empower local farmers and fortify Pakistan’s agri value chain. “Even in its early stage, the 'Seed to Table' project has exceeded our expectations and we are incredibly proud of the results. The project has already saved USD 2mn with a realized localization potential of around USD 10mn,” said Abrar Hasan.

“By taking control of the entire supply chain, we've ensured a consistent supply of high-quality fresh tomatoes directly to NFL's production facilities,” he added. Earlier, CEO Pakistan Agricultural Coalition, Arif Nadeem, in his welcome address said that their task is to make Pakistan’s agricultural sector globally competitive and issues raised in Agri Connections 2024 are to be addressed by government, policy makers.

“We should trigger things for the growth of our agriculture sector and I believe that better environment for investments emerges through this kind of conferences,” said Arif. Panel discussion on how agriculture can salvage Pakistan’s economy was also held on the first day of the conference in which distinguished speakers from different sectors discussed the opportunities and options for the country in the agri sector.