When 2010 superfloods inundated around 2.2m acres of farmland in Sindh, soil conditions suited cultivation of sunflower.

The crop was cultivated on around 267,000ha and growers and authorities felt it had emerged as a major alternative Rabi crop. But, its recent sowing figures have proved their assessment wrong.

Statistics available with the Sindh agriculture department indicate that the provincial sunflower acreage has dropped substantially to 118,578ha in 2014-15 from 266,964ha in 2010-11, cutting production to 130,740m tons and 341,641m tons, respectively.

Sunflower is now losing its attraction, though a vital crop, that helps reduce country’s import bill of edible oil. The Sindh Agriculture Research Department does nothing to arrest this declining trend, however.

“If 2010-11 is taken as a base year the sunflower’s sowing figures have shown a drop of 55pc in the last five years,” points out an agriculture department officer, who believes price and seed’s quality are adverse factors. He adds that further drop in its cultivation couldn’t be ruled out in areas like Badin and Umerkot.

After 2010 superfloods which destroyed ready for harvest rice crop, sunflower seed was distributed free by an NGO for around 92,000 acres as a package to support farmers in right bank districts hit by widespread devastations.

“If government gives the required subsidy for sunflower cultivation it can easily reduce its $1.5bn import bill of edible oil”, says Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) President Abdul Majeed Nizamani. Until recently, Nizamani has been personally cultivating sunflower on 100-odd acres but now he has sown the crop only just six acres.

“If the government gives the required subsidy for sunflower cultivation it can easily reduce its $1.5bn import bill of edible oil”, says Sindh Abadgar Board President Abdul Majeed Nizamani

A couple of years back he had obtained seeds from Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) and private companies and their results were at variance with each other. Results show that PARC’s hybrid seed gave encouraging recovery of oil but nutrients factor in soil needed further analysis as hybrid seed consumes nutrients more than indigenous varieties.

Lower Sindh farmer Nadeem Shah and his upper Sindh counterpart Amir Bux Pahore find little attraction in sunflower cultivation. Shah has cut the crop’s area of 150- 200 acres to 50 acres this year in Sujawal. In his area, per acre 11-12 maunds of production was achievable with one cycle of water and on a soil with residual moisture, the yield was 4-5 maunds per acre.

But the rate of Rs1,500-Rs1,600/40kg was seen as inadequate by the farmers.

Pahore gave up its cultivation in Shikarpur — located on right bank of Indus — as low productivity rendered it less profitable as compared to wheat. Farmers in left bank areas still opt for sunflower.

A private sunflower seed company’s representative attributes drop in acreage to lack of credit availability to farmers, who find it hard to arrange more finances for crops like sunflower.

According to him, soil is fast losing organic matter because of back to back use of hybrid seeds of rice and sunflower crops. Farmers are required to use farmyard manure to reclaim soil’s fertility and ensure required plant-to-plant distance. Since imported seed is to be purchased every year, farmers remain reluctant to buy it.

Growers agree that cash flows could be a problem but it is not the only factor that has led to substantial decline in sowing of this short duration crop.

Research authorities need to pay serious attention to the crop and the government should see if its marketing system could be streamlined to stabilise prices which have dropped to Rs1,500-Rs1600/40kg from Rs2,200/40kg in the last couple of years.

The SAB has suggested that the government should commit a subsidy of Rs12bn for its cultivation in Sindh and Balochistan. In return, it would earn Rs85bn besides 250,000 tonnes of extra oil. Its assessment is that sunflower could be cultivated on 400,000 acres in Sindh alone.

kistan Oilseed Development Board (PODB) has been dissolved by the government. Apparently, there is none to monitor issues in sunflower cultivation and production.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, January 18th, 2016