Minister ties IT-enabled farming to agri-economic boost

HYDERABAD: The benefits of information-communication technology and agricultural research must trickle down to farmers so that they could truly lead the economic development of Pakistan, which was essentially an agrarian country, a minister said on Tuesday.

“Rural communities need this support as the challenges of climate change, ups-and-downs in agriculture market, and overall economy are threatening productivity,” Dr Sinkandar Mandhro, Sindh minster of health and religious affairs, told a moot titled “Social Sciences and Information-Communication Technology (ICSSICT) 2018” at Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam.

“Since information technology is taking importance at every level nowadays, the university will hopefully generate a productive cadre that may extend support to agriculture, especially farmers as in this situation, and research … must be initiated by SAU to help growers.”

The provincial minister said Sindh was bestowed with natural resources like 1050 kilometer long coastline, river Indus flowing across the country, its productive catchment area, mountains, and desert, which must be utilised for the wellbeing of communities living near there.

"We together can create a bunch of flowers through a community-based action research, in which agriculture graduates can play a role," the minister said.

He said these measures were of essence as since country’s economy was agriculture-based and the farmers are playing major role in food production.

During his address the minister appreciated SAU for organising this conference, which attracted agriculture scientists and experts in information technology from Pakistan and abroad.

Dr Mujeebuddin Memon Sehrai, vice chancellor SAU, said there was a lot of scope to work in agriculture because country’s entire economy depends on this sector.

“Unfortunately, the majority of farmers is uneducated and looks unable to foresee the effects of climate change, despite the fact that it has become a reality,” Seharai said.

In this situation, the VC added, the SAU graduates could bridge the gap of educating farmers about these emerging challenges for crop production, crop protection, agriculture engineering, and maintaining soil nutrients.

“The objective of this conference is to bridge gap between farmers and agriculture graduates. I know growers are crying against the challenges facing them in their fields. We are here producing a cadre to help them through research,” the SAU head said.

Sehrai said presently graduates of professional institutes, including medical sciences and engineering technology, were facing problems in job market. “But it agriculture university cadre enjoys more employment opportunities and many of graduates of crop sciences are leading high profile companies and institutions,” he said.

Agriculture scientists and economists hailing from Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, Canada, and leading universities of the country highlighted the importance of improving multi-level collaboration to cope with challenges facing agriculture with the help of latest technology to benefit rural communities.

Dr Muhammad Shafie from Malaysia said this part of Pakistan (Sindh) has rich fertile lands, irrigation system with river and canals and agriculture universities may utilise these blessing for the wellbeing of the rural communities.

“Presently there is less attention from academic research works that focuses on information technology firms that develop and deploy cloud data center infrastructures for cloud service providers and other private business organizations,” Shafie said during his presentation. Prof Dr Mustafa Kan from Turkey said this event would strengthen Pakistan-Turkey ties in the field of agriculture and create research culture at every level.

Prof Maulana Ali from Indonesia presented his papers on human resources strategy in the framework of food improvement and talked about the challenges in the specific field.

The conference attracted a large number of agriculture scientists, economists, growers and researchers in fields of food production, resources management and irrigation, academia and students.