THE federal and the Sindh governments appear to have given up on agricultural planning, which is crucial for sustainable growth of the sector. No officially sowing target has yet been fixed for major crops like paddy, cotton and sugarcane for the current kharif season.

The Sindh government perhaps didn’t consider it necessary to fix the crop targets, and the federal government is taking the matter casually as agriculture is a provincial subject.

The fixing of targets for crops has become practically irrelevant or a mere ritual for both tiers of government, with no timelines being seriously observed.

The sowing of cotton and sugarcane has already been completed, while that of paddy is under way. The targets ideally need to be fixed before March as the kharif season begins in Sindh in April or late March.

This year, the Sindh government didn’t fix the targets for reasons best known to the provincial agriculture minister — who himself is an agriculturist — and the agriculture secretary.

After the 18th amendment, it is the provincial government’s job to come up with crop-sowing targets and fix prices for procurement of the sugarcane crop. The targets are set while considering the size of the previous crops, and the availability of water, seed and fertiliser etc.

The fixing of targets for crops has become practically irrelevant or a mere ritual for both tiers of government, with no timelines being seriously observed

The kharif targets were proposed by the agriculture department, but the minister and agriculture secretary have not approved them.

“We kept in mind the proposals of the Federal Committee for Agriculture (FCA) that were discussed in an April 30 meeting, and we are planning things accordingly for each district. The minutes of the FCA meeting reached us this month. The FCA has certainly fixed higher targets as compared to the ones planned by Sindh. Our own targets were proposed to the Sindh government but the matter is pending approval,” said Agriculture DG Hidayatullah Chhajro.

The Sindh agriculture department proposed a sowing target of 300,000ha and a production target of 170m tonnes for sugarcane; 750,000ha and 2.6m tonnes for rice; and 650,000ha and 4m bales for cotton respectively.

The FCA’s targets differ from the provincial estimates: 781,000ha for paddy and 320,000ha for sugarcane. And it wants Sindh to produce 4.4m cotton bales.

The province had exceeded the sowing target for rice in 2014-15 by cultivating the crop on 781,679ha, mainly because of sowing in areas on the Indus’ left bank where paddy cultivation is banned.

And this year, the provincial government has enforced a strict ban, as a result of which paddy’s area under cultivation might drop. While officials believe that rice would still be grown in the banned areas by influential farmers, this would not be brought on the record by the field officers.

“We never fix any target for the banned left bank areas although it is reflected in the overall cultivation record. The FCA perhaps didn’t take this into consideration and wanted us to fix a target of 781,000ha for 2015-16,” says a provincial official.

Meanwhile, the FCA’s sugarcane-production target of 190m tonnes seems ambitious if last season’s price controversy is anything to go by. The farmers may prefer cotton over sugarcane this season.

And the FCA’s cotton target of 4.4m bales also seems unrealistic. Sindh plans to keep the target at 4m bales, which has been unchanged over the last three years. And it has failed to achieve that target, with production never crossing the 3.5m-bale mark since 2009-10 (when it had produced 4.2m bales).

Agriculture officers feel the province might be able to touch the ‘unofficial’ cotton-sowing target. Initial reports from one district in Ghotki indicate that the area under cotton cultivation has increased by 25,000-30,000ha despite the ban on paddy-sowing there.

Meanwhile, sugarcane has been sown on around 310,000ha so far, according to reports from field offices. Likewise, paddy-cultivation could be closer to 750,000ha.

Sindh needs a proper policy for setting the sowing and harvesting targets and fixing a fair support price for sugarcane.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business ,July 21st, 2015

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