State of agriculture

Pakistan is an agricultural country. The agriculture sector, which accounts for 22 percent of GDP, employs 42 percent of the workforce, while 66 percent of the rural population earn livelihood from the sector. Around 60 percent of direct or indirect contribution in exports comes from the sector. According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the agriculture sector’s growth decelerated to 0.8 percent in FY2019, well below the target of 3.8 percent, hurting the economic growth that fell to 3.3 percent from 5.5 percent in the preceding fiscal year. Farmers faced liquidity constraints due to both escalated input prices and lower crop returns.

It merits a mention that the National Assembly standing committee on National Food Security and Research has said that the world is adopting latest technologies to meet food security challenges but Pakistan is lagging behind due to hurdles in policymaking. The committee believes that biotechnology is the need of the hour. The committee in its recent meeting held at Islamabad discussed different issues related to agriculture and food security and asked the Ministry of Food Security and Research to make more efforts for the betterment of farmers. In view of the above, it is necessary to invest in precision agriculture, because in precision agriculture we are supposed to help the farmers reduce input costs.

Khan Faraz

Peshawar