Four years down the line, Punjab’s initiative to promote urban agriculture and keep prices of vegetables under control seems to be running aground. With almost non-existent manpower and services in the bigger cities, the issue is: how to promote urban agriculture.

The government was warned against all these possibilities in 2011 when it started the scheme to bring down prices of vegetables, which had then gone exceptionally high. Since then, the Punjab government has done almost everything to improve the supply side. But it has failed to connect a rural product to urban lawns and pots.

In 2011, it allocated a huge amount of Rs410 million in one go — so that the agricultural department does not have to run after money every year. It set the target of around 150,000 packets of seedlings of basic vegetable — onion, tomato and chilies — to be sold every year. It told the Vegetable Research Institute to prepare those packets and asked Extension Directorate to sell them to city dwellers.

Policymakers have not been able to promote value-addition in processing vegetables or to bring price stability

Since then, the department has generally been meeting both Rabi and Kharif targets of 100,000 and 50,000 packets respectively. Even this year, its figures so far show well over 90pc of the targeted sale. Since all these packets are sold at no profit, no loss basis, the department recovers what it invests every year. So, there are no financial problems either. All these steps take care of the supply side, which has been running efficiently for the last four years.

However, the market impact remains missing, if prices and yield figures are to be believed. None of the vegetable has seen any notable slide in price or rise in production figures. Though it would be too optimistic to expect major market dent by such a limited programme, the trickle down effect should have been felt by the people.

All these packets touch around 125,000 households as some people purchase more than one packet. Each packet is sufficient for five marla plot, and should cover around 4,687 acres in the province. With such a scale of sale, supplemented by many non-government organisations which supply additional seedlings free of cost, some kind measurable impact, however small, should have been there.

Those executing the plan think that the entire official attention has been riveted to supply side, ignoring the operational part. The provincial government has failed to promote ‘urban agriculture’ as a concept. It should have involved those departments that have urban presence, create optics in urban centres and advertise the impact — both of price and yield — of the enterprise.

The city dwellers need not only awareness and training but after sale service as well. No doubt, the seedlings are easily available, and at cheap rates. But how can one grow them? The agriculture department hardly has any manpower to cover even a fraction of the cities. In urban areas, there are development authorities or corporations holding official land. Under them, parks and horticulture authorities (PHAs) have been created to manage and beautify the lands under their management.

In cities like Lahore, demonstration areas could have easily been created in huge parks. In addition, educational institutions, where even bigger demonstration plots could have been spared, have also not been encouraged to join hands.

Policymakers have not been able to promote value-addition in processing of vegetables and bring price stability. With production and supply chain in place, it is time to make the next push by involving all those departments and organisations that can contribute to the success of the provincial initiative.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, May 4th, 2015

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