PAKISTAN faces a tough job in the coming Rabi season and that is to give a production package that would enable the country to stand on its own feet by ensuring food security. It’s an arduous task as the last ten years have seen such deterioration in the system that it is difficult to recoup them to some level of sanity.

Yet sanity has to prevail. We have not only to talk of primary food security but also of secondary food security. Secondary food security has to do with production of coarse grains such as maize, sorghum, millet and barley while primary food security is with fine grains like wheat and rice. Now rice happens to be a foreign exchange earner and may, in fact, be taken with cotton as the major earner of foreign exchange.

The difficulty in raising production is compounded by two factors, the first being shortage of water - in the river systems and that too of the order of 36 to 40 per cent. Despite raising the capacity of Mangla, we have not been able to fill the dam to its original level what to speak of the aspirations of increasing its capacity.

The second is that continuous use of soils has led to majority of them becoming toxic. Besides this, the loss of three million hectares to urbanisation is yet another contributory factor that requires serious consideration.

Chemical aspect aside, the microbial activity and the cycling of nutrients through organic matter impacts substantially the nutrient ability. The concentration of soil solution acts in such a way that the nutrients are intimately related to productivity of the crops. It is not easy to recoup these microbes in the soil and it takes some time before the microbial activity comes to the critical level again. It is now an established fact that soils with higher organic matter will be more productive.

The misuse of soils is very common. The continuous use of saline water has added to problems. Pakistan has the largest network of irrigation canals. Right, but that has lost its momentum as silt that comes with salts has desecrated our soils. It has also in the long run reduced the productivity of the soil. There are soils where saline water can be used. These are soils whose major build up is of sand. These soils are potentially our best bet and can be put to a variety of uses.

Again soils that are poor in nutrients require a different agronomic intervention and one can see that these are areas that have been converted to high value crops for the purposes of export. Pakistan has certain logistical advantage as far as export markets are concerned. That can wait because the soils have first to be understood and then appropriate technology for a particular crop developed. The mistakes that we have been committing are that we try and create a technology for the entire country irrespective of the nature of the resource base.

We have also not understood the basis for plant nutrients in nature? Have we ever tried to fertilise natural forests or have we ever tried to plant trees, as they are found in nature? What then is the technique that nature allows and accepts and can we adopt and adapt these in our man-made techniques. Nature provides us enough food for thought and enough technology (s) for implementation provided there is enough perception and cognitive ability.

In the presence of man-made technologies that perception has been lost by our farmers and our extension agents. So part of the answer lies in trying to relive our past with the compulsions for the future and to try and recreate agriculture in a meaningful way. It has also been maintained that where there is water shortage the intensity of a different kind of agriculture has to be developed.

The mountains and their foothills are repositories of fertilisers and can be converted into agriculture production systems of a different kind. Boulders and stones in the foothills provide the necessary fertiliser through slow release of nutrients to the plants. This has been demonstrated by certain gardens that have been developed in the Murree hills, and yet because of CDA the lands in the vicinity of Islamabad have been decimated and their natural strengths destroyed by making them plain and destroying the natural biodiversity.

The thesis that has been repeatedly made is that the production system must match the local natural production indicators. The Northern areas are a case in point where eucalyptus and poplar trees have been planted by AKRSP. These are trees meant for the plains and that too where subsoil water is saline. Eucalyptus in particular is a massive water user and reduces the water table in saline areas and is thus suitable for such areas where the subsoil water is saline. There are areas in Sindh where water table is at less than four feet from the surface. This is the potential area for these two plants.

As the nature of work changes studies to understand the complexity of nature rather than the aspirations of man-made technologies have to be made and this requires a sea of change in thinking. Soils are inextricably linked with plant efficiency. The nature of this efficiency is not only in biological terms but also in terms of preference by the market place or consumers. The vegetables that we are getting in the market place are heavily laced with pesticides and yet there are plants that can be grown to intercept and impede these pests. These are natural homegrown species and are part of the land species that we have.

The soils are a buffer to many new aspects. With fossil fuel prices not under control there is an effort at producing vegetables in small areas and in a controlled environment so that transport costs can be eliminated. That means that the natural way of seasons can be manipulated by the ingenuity of man. They are trying to do so in Punjab and it is possible to have landless production systems as in hydroponics, in aeroponics and in aquaponics.

One has to understand that aeroponics is production of vegetables through suspension of roots in the air. Such a system requires the understanding that plants do absorb nutrients via leaves and not all of it is taken up by the root systems.

These hormones for plants can be made from natures systems and not by chemical systems that are man-made. The aquaponics part is where fishponds are generating fish for the market place. There, the effort would be to use nutrients that develop in the water tank and use it for vegetable production systems. Now hydroponics and controlled environment production systems can be as expensive as you want it to be or as simple as you and I can afford.

The compromise is easy and determined by the risks one wants to take to understand a new technology and thereby later on develop one’s own way of doing this. Thus in Rawat near Rawalpindi the intervention costs Rs20 million whereas mine costs about Rs5,000. The new technologies that are developed are not for adding to the inflationary pressures but to reduce the cost to consumers.

So soils and soil-less agriculture are both possible. Use of fertiliser and its discarding are also possible.