Farmers seek agricultural subsidies to boost farming

PESHAWAR: Farmers have asked the government to help resolve their problems as agriculture was the mainstay of the country’s economy.

The growers said the rising prices of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides have crippled their economic condition.

The government, they said, should improve the condition of the water channels and provide subsidies to the farmers on seed, pesticides and fertilizers to ease their problems.

They also expressed concern over the mushroom growth of housing societies being established on agricultural lands, saying that cultivable land was fast shrinking due to unchecked urbanisation.

They lamented the indifferent attitude of the government towards the agriculture sector and said the situation would further deteriorate if proper measures were not taken for the improvement of this neglected but important sector.

The farmers are unable to buy pesticides and other required items for their crops owing to their falling purchasing power.

A local landlord and farmer councillor in Peshawar, who is provincial leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl), Abdul Mateen Khan expressed concern over the prevailing situation.

Talking to The News, he deplored the step-motherly attitude of the government towards the farmers, saying the agricultural lands were shrinking with the passage of time.

“There is no big landlord in the province because after the death of parents, the agricultural land is distributed among the sons and daughters according to inheritance law,” he said.

“There are small landholders and they are facing problems due to wrong policies of the rulers. Though the rulers made tall claims to provide relief to farmers, no practical step was taken for them,” he added.

“There is no marketing policy of the government,” he said and referred to the prices of vegetables. “The prices of tomatoes are increasing with each passing day,” he said.

He pointed out there was no crop insurance policy. “If the hailstorm damages the standing corps, the farmers are not given relief and they have to bear the loss on their own,” he said.

Though Pakistan is an agricultural country, the successive governments have ignored the farmers and agriculture sector. They did not reserve any quota for farmers like those of other sectors including industries.

He said the sons and daughters of agriculturalists should have quotas in the colleges and universities and there should have been a policy to honour the agriculturalists.

Enumerating various government departments, he said the police officers, secretariat officials, professors and teachers, doctors, students have their identification cards of their respective departments but the agriculturalists have no such identification.

Abdul Mateen Khan popularly known as Lala urged the government to concentrate on the betterment of small landowners, reduce prices of tractors, pesticides, seeds and other required items.

He said the increasing loadshedding throughout the province had badly affected irrigation as the farmers could not afford to irritate their crops by using generators.

“The authorities can overcome these problems by providing solar systems to farmers through easy installments,” he said, adding the government always provided facilities to industrialists but ignored the farmers.

He observed that the farmers and landowners had no proper organization for the solution of their problems and that was the main reason their problems remained unresolved for years.

Israr Khan Mayar, a local farmer, said they could not afford to buy the required items for cultivating land, but they had no other options.

He said he spent more than Rs200,000 on the cultivation of maize crop but it could not grow due to waterlogging issue. He said that he had to take out a loan to buy fertilizer for his crops.