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Transforming Agriculture in Pakistan into a Dynamic Part of Our Economy
Transforming Agriculture in Pakistan into a Dynamic Part of Our Economy
Agriculture in Pakistan employs about half of the population of Pakistan and contributes about a quarter to our GDP. One of the major reasons behind the slow growth in agriculture are low literacy level in the villages, employing backward and inefficient techniques in agriculture, very slow modernization and very little value addition in the raw agricultural produce. The purpose of this blog is to give suggestions towards a better, coherent and organized model of agriculture as opposed to current haphazard agricultural practices.
God has given our country a very fertile land. He also gave us a great weather — temperature, winds and rainfall pattern change quite dramatically across the country and along various seasons. And as we go from one corner of our country to the other corner, the varied mix of the weather parameters changes from one extreme to the other extreme. And we also have one of the best irrigation systems in the world.
All of the above factors decide what would be the optimal set of crops, vegetables, or fruit that would give maximum returns to the farmers and landowners. And if we want to make the best of our land and our enterprising people, we must take into account the benefits of value addition and processing of the raw agricultural produce.
Since most of our farmers are uneducated, in the world of information and technology, they usually cannot make the best decision about what to grow in their lands, and mostly just copy the more successful farmers in their area. This leads to inefficient haphazard agricultural practices that are mostly suboptimal when it comes to benefit to the farmer and rest of the community.
I am trying to give ideas about more organized agriculture. To describe the gist of my suggestions in a nutshell, I will try to give the following ideas and explain them later in the article.
1. The government must actively help the farmer with expert advice throughout the crop cycle including the choice of crop that the farmer would grow on his land.
2. The government will strongly encourage value addition and processed food preferably close to rural areas where the raw crop is grown.
3. The government will try to encourage microfinance banks and agricultural banks to work closely with the farmer.
4. The government will encourage formation of cooperative companies run by people with technical and industrial talent and business acumen who would work to add value and process the raw food grown in the villages. Farmers would also have a stake in these cooperatives.
5. There will be some form of insurance that would protect farmer from extreme crop damage from the calamities of the weather. The insurance would not cover man-inflicted losses.
6. The government will ask vocational institutes to impart skills related to food processing and value addition. They will also introduce programs related to culinary skills especially for women.
7. All of the above different but related operations must build on each other and work seamlessly together.
I would also suggest that large number of teams comprising three professionals will visit the farmer and his lands every week or two weeks. The members of the team would be
a. Technical Advisor related to agriculture.
b. Financial Advisor
d. Agricultural/Microfinance bank advisor
The teams will periodically visit each farmer and discuss with him and among themselves the developments and progress related to his crops and the related financial and logistics matters.
I start by defining the role of the Technical advisor. He will inform the farmer and rest of the group regarding technical issues regarding farmer’s crop. This would include everything from choice of crop, weather and temperature, pest control, optimal watering times and other factors to achieve a good yield.
Financial Advisor will help the farmer in financial decision making at the micro level. He will also discuss with the farmer the risks and rewards related to both his decisions and vagaries of the nature/weather. He will advise the farmer how to cope with financial problems and related difficulties keeping in mind the farmer’s financial standing. He will also explain how loans or aid from the government and loans from the Microfinance bank can help him throught the crop cycle and later. Financial Advisor will give possible projections of costs of input to the agriculture cycle of the crop and will also project most probable scenarios of how much his crop would fetch in the market. He would also help the farmer on practicalities of buying inputs for his crop and when to sell his harvest.
Microfinance Advisor will discuss with rest of the group how his bank can help in different scenarios and he will also try to protect the interests of his bank and will try to counter any possibility of deception and fraud.
All of the three categories of professionals mentiond above would be rigorously trained to help the farmer and would be taught through case studies of hundreds of possible and real world scenarios.
Since the success of the farmer rests on the successful working of the group, I will state again that the group will help the farmer in his choice of the crop/fruit/vegetable considering weather, nature of the land, availability of water, farmer’s savings, and potential reward from the crop grown on his land while taking into account government’s loans and aid and microfinance bank’s loans. The group will also consider the benefits to the farmer from any possibility of value addition and food processing.
After working towards the optimal and successful harvest in a properly planned manner, the next step for the government is to work towards value addition by industrial processing and preservation of the agricultural produce. There are several traditional and some other novel ways to achieve this objective. The traditional approach would be to make jams, pickle and ketchups etc. A slightly better way that complements the first approach would be to preserve the fruit and vegetable in cans. Since canning is both expensive and environment unfriendly, we could use tetra pack like boxes and pouches with several aluminimum linings to preserve the fruit and vegetable while pasteurizing them in the industrial process of packing in the boxes/pouches. I am very confident that such aluminium lined boxes and pouches can easily be made that would preserve the freshness of processed fruit and vegetables. This approach will be cheaper than traditional canning of fruit and vegetables.
Even more novel and innovative approach to value addition would be to prepare great classis Baluchi, Pashtun, Punjabi and Sindhi meals under supervision of some of the best chefs, and package them in aluminium lined tetra pack boxes and sell them in both local and export markets. These specially prepared meals would be liked by Pakistani, Indian, Afghan, Iranian and Turkic diaspora abroad in western countries. I am very confident that this new line of business would become very successful quite soon if we could execute it with tact and competence. In Europe, there are a large number of very small family held companies that prepare high quality exotic food and this category makes significant enough part of trade within European nations. Though this would be misleading that we could come at par with those companies in a few years, we can certainly establish food brands that start to get noticed everywhere in the world and start gaining some popularity.
One could also suggest that several clusters of villages could make value addition cooperative companies with some help from the government. These cooperative companies would compete with other domestic privately held companies in the area of food processing. These cooperatives would run the industrial operations of preserving raw food and preparing processed food and later market them in national and international markets. Farmers, the farmers advisory group, industrial workers, technical staff and management would be given appropriate holding of shares in these cooperatives while some stock of shares will be floated on national stock exchanges. If the cooperatives become successsful, they could help in social uplift of the areas by building good schools, and hospitals.
I also suggest that Vocational schools would be set up to teach skills related to food processing and preservation. This kind of training is virtually non-existant in current vocational schools and if the government takes steps to promote organized and value added agriculture, this line of training must be a special priority in the vocational schools. The schools might also teach culinary skills and encourage their students to learn and experiment with local and international cuisine at some special vocational centers located in larger cities.
Another suggestions is to do some sort of crop protection insurance for the farmer against extremem damage to crops by the weather.
I would like to end this article by saying that people of Pakistan have great hope for their future and they do think that both political parties must do whatever they can to eradicate poverty and take our country towards a better future. If the current governments systematically take action for better future of Pakistan, we will indeed emerge as a successful nation and we look towards these political parties for that.
To our leaders, I quote some lyrics from a Coke Studio Song by Alamgir.
Steer it most cautiously, boatman
This boat of mine with a broken rim
The river seems endless as if there were no shore
Whether rainclouds rumble
Take us across to the other end, boatman
However loud these river ******** roar
Help me get my boat to the shore, boatman
Take us across to the other end, boatman
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you need to share this on insaf.pk
