Pakistan has tremendous livestock wealth comprising about fifty million cattle, buffaloes, sheep and goat. They provide milk and meat to the populace and make a substantial contribution to exports.

However, while they feed a population of about 140 million, are a source of sustenance for the farming community and earn for the exchequer, there are no concrete measures and consistent provision for adequate green fodder and concentrates for them.

Officials keep discussing fodder. Arguments, opinions and recommendations, if any, are for the record. One hasn’t come across any effort for raising fodder crops in a planned manner and ensuring that the animals receive bellyful quality feed.

Agriculture departments treat fodder as the livestock department’s baby. Their priority is wheat, rice, sugar-cane and cotton, a few other crops and fruit gardens of influential people. Fodder has no place in their scheme of things.

For livestock departments, the concern is veterinary services and research. There is no fodder wing in the livestock department of any province. The federal government has a livestock division but fodder is not known to have made its agenda in any reportable manner. It has not come up with any plan for producing fodder or organizing the supply of concentrates.

Research organizations are either yet to come up with a fodder crop that makes the breeders life easier or their researches have not been tested in the field for the benefit of farmers.

The only segment of the populace that accords any importance to fodder is breeder. But small breeders forming the bulk of milk and meat animal’s owners either do not own land or their land holdings are too small to raise fodder crops in addition to cash crops; their cropping practice is confined to cultivation that gives them subsistence level living income and grains for a year’s time.

Official statistic provide acreage under main cash crops and some other crops but there is no information on how much land is used for raising green fodder, the staple diet of animals. Concentrates like cereal grains, their by products and cotton and oil seed cakes are also in short supply. Food crops are not produced in sufficient quantity to meet the population of human beings; their availability for livestock is consequently not to be ensured. The high deficiency of concentrates is conceded by provincial livestock departments.

There are no clear and reliable statistics of land under fodder crops. According to an expert of the sector, ‘about 15 per cent of culturable land is used for growing fodder. This was the distribution of land between cash crops and fodder at the time of independence. That ratio is believed to have been maintained since then’.

In the meantime, the number of animals has increased many folds. It is argued that yields have improved considerably. The first livestock census in 1979 had counted about thirty million animals; their population in 1947 is not known but it is believed to have been less than one million. The area producing fodder has however not increased. Neither has produce gone up more than five times.

The population of human beings and livestock has been increasing at a high rate. That means competition between man and animal for land to produce food for them. It has already become a difficult situation and if the population of the two continues rising at the present rate, we would be confronted by another kind of food crises within the foreseeable future.

According to officials, the ‘animals are undernourished by about 30 per cent’. That should explain low productivity in both milk and meat. Underfed animals cannot be very productive. That Pakistan is largely meeting its meat and milk needs from domestic sources is due to the increase in the livestock population. That is far from being the ideal state of affairs. Just as the country should be producing more cash crops from less land, we should be obtaining more milk and meat without adding to the livestock count of the country.

However, nothing is being done on that front. The attitude of agriculture departments is splashed all over the countryside. There is no shortage of messages for crops in rural areas. Extension wings guide farmers on crops, undertake media campaigns for equipping farmers for producing more but their targets are the main cash crops; fodder features nowhere in their dispatches.

The attitude of the official managers of the sector can be gauged from the fact that statistical data for main crops as well as some other crops is compiled but fodder crops are never mentioned. For obvious reason: there is no specific area under them on a consistent basis and farmers cultivate them on an if and when manner, that is, whenever they feel that part of their land can be used for them; land is never specifically allocated to them. Fodder is hardly the top priority of farmers even though livestock is their lifeline in majority cases. Actually, even the 15 per cent land used for producing fodder is at best a guess. There are no pastures worth the name.

Recently, a high level meeting in Islamabad discussed the dairy sector. It took the issue from all angles and deliberated on the number of milk plants, their performance, production of milk,its conversion in to dry milk and spent long hours on ways and means for enhancing productivity. They also discussed ways and means for increasing the produce but it never occurred to the official and public sector experts participating in the moot that animals need nourishment for higher yields.

This attitude of neglect for livestock’s food needs has seriously undermined positive growth of the sector. The reason why the produce of animals in some countries is more than double those in Pakistan is quite simple: green fodder and concentrates are made available to them in plenty. The animals are well and properly fed and breeders obtain the maximum output from them.

It is the same for the meat sector. That the quality of meat of Pakistan’s animals is excellent is a bonus because nothing is done for fattening calves and sheep and goat are left to graze on near barren lands, the later on trees and shrubs by the road side and wherever they can find a patch of grass. But regular pastures do not exist anywhere in the country.

This a serious problem that the government needs must resolve on a planned basis because livestock represents self- reliance in food and can be further developed for exports and it is the surest remedy for poverty.