|
|
|
| May 24, 2005 | Tuesday | Rabi-us-Sani 15, 1426 |
Spurious seed, worm hit sunflower crop
ISLAMABAD, May 23: Sunflower could not grow over an area of about 30,000 acres in Sindh and Punjab because farmers used sub-standard and spurious seed imported by some well-known multinational companies and approved by the government, sources told Dawn here on Monday.
A number of meetings were held recently in the ministry of food, agriculture and livestock (Minfal) to devise a mechanism to compensate the affected farmers, who were deceived in the name of “foreign and quality seed”. However, Minfal has not yet held a meeting with representatives of the affected farmers, sources said.
They said the farmers had faced losses of millions of rupees but neither Minfal nor the provincial agriculture ministries had constituted any team to assert these losses.
Sources further told Dawn that a pest called “armyworm” had attacked a big chunk of sunflower area in Punjab and was causing damage to crops which were almost ready for harvest. The Pakistan Oilseed Development Board (PODB) field staff, in coordination with the agriculture extension department, was also busy in providing precautionary measures to the growers.
They said according to a rough estimate, dealers had been successful in selling on high rates more than 3 tons of spurious sunflower seed to farmers in both the provinces. The seed had been imported from America, Australia and France by well-known multi-national companies.
Punjab and Sindh are the two leading sunflower-producing provinces. It is suspected that profiteers had also mixed fake seed with the quality ones and had sold them to farmers in packing bearing names of international standard seed that promises increased per-acre yield.
Farmers fear that per acre yield of sunflower could be lower than that of the last year due to use of fake seeds and attack of armyworm on sunflower crops in some parts of Punjab.
Sunflower is cultivated in Badin, Sujawal, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and Nawab Shah in Sindh and in Sahiwal, Multan, Gujranwala and Faisalabad in Punjab. In NWFP, it is cultivated in Dera Ismail Khan.
According to the figures of the PODB for last month, sunflower was cultivated on 780,535 acres against the target of 735,000 acres fixed for 2004-05. The cultivation showed 35 per cent increase over the last year’s sowing on 577,000 acres.
|
|
|
|
