Farmers hail measures with cautions

LAHORE: Farming community on Friday largely expressed disappointment over the measures announced in the federal budget for the agriculture sector.  Only one farmer organisation that has been protesting for years over what they call a complete destruction of agriculture sector years is a bit optimistic about a few steps announced for the sector but with a caution. 

Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI), a body of small and medium scale farmers, mainly hailing from south and central Punjab, welcomed the move of reduction in the prices of fertilisers and pesticides.

Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, president PKI said some of our demands have been met. However, one of our main demands was the fixation of the minimum support price for all the major crops, which were not accepted by the government, Khokhar said. 

He said farmers are facing immense problems in selling their produce at a reasonable price. In this scenario, he added, the government must have allocated funds for the Trading Corporation of Pakistan to buy cotton, rice and other main crops from farmers. This step was urgently needed given that the summer crop plantation was in full swing.

Khokhar said the government took some steps in the right direction and at least reduced the prices of urea and Diammonium phosphate (DAP) fertiliser. However, he said the price of urea should have been fixed at Rs1200/bag instead of Rs 1,400 announced in the budget. Moreover, DAP price should have been cut to Rs 2,000/bag instead of Rs2,500.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar expressed his government’s endeavour to take historic steps for the agriculture sector, including extensive relief and incentives for farmers.  Dar announced a special package for the development of agriculture sector. He said the volume of agriculture credit is being increased to Rs700 billion for the next fiscal year from the existing Rs600 billion.

The government proposed reduction in the electricity tariffs (off-peak) for tube wells to Rs5.35/unit from Rs8.85/unit. The government will bear expenses of Rs27 billion in this.

Hasan Ali Chaniho, director of the Farmers Associates Pakistan said the government failed to address the basic issues facing the agrarian economy. The government announced no step to enhance the land fertility. “You cannot produce a good crop even you have good seed and all inputs unless you have a fertile land,” Chaniho said.

For effective land preparation, he observed, laser land levelers and other agriculture implements should have been provided to farmers on subsidised rates. Besides, he added that the steps should have been taken to provide gypsum and farm yard manure to increase the soil fertility for increasing crop productivity.

Chaniho said failure of cotton crop was an ample example of poor quality of seeds that wreaked havoc with the output of this important crop. The steep decline in cotton production led to a miserable performance of the agriculture sector and GDP growth rate. 

“Why we failed to learn a lesson from this total fiasco,” he questioned. He stressed the need to take effective steps for the provision of quality seed of cotton to farmers.

Chaniho advised a national seed company, having the mandate of ensuring availability of pure seed to farmers nationwide, should be set up.

Ibrahim Mughal, president of Agri Forum Pakistan said the present government badly failed in resolving the problems of farmers.   Mughal termed the steps announced by the minister for the uplift of the agriculture sector as peanuts. 

He said the problems of the farmers have been compounded over the years as no concrete step has been taken by the present regime, he added. Urea should be sold to farmers at Rs1,000/bag and DAP at Rs2,200/bag.  He said cotton production could never be increased unless measures are taken for the better crop management. 

Sarfraz Khan, vice president of Kissan Board Pakistan said the failure of the whole economy in the 2015-16 fiscal year was due to the collapse of the main cash crop cotton. 

“We performed very badly in cotton production mainly due to poor quality seeds and lack of a robust marketing system. That is why growth rate of the sector contracted after a long period,” he said.