ISLAMABAD: The government decided on Wednesday to maintain last year’s wheat production target of 26 million tonnes for the 2015-16 Rabi season in view of surplus stocks and difficulties in export caused by depressed international prices as well as enhanced supplies.

At the same time, the government has conveyed to the provinces its intention not to increase support price for wheat from last year’s Rs1,300 per 40kg, according to officials of the food ministry.

Decisions pertaining to the Rabi crops were taken during a meeting of the Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA), presided over by Minister for National Food Security and Research Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan.

Addressing a news conference, the minister suggested that in view of surplus stocks of conventional crops like wheat, rice and cotton the farmers should enter into the arena of non-conventional crops like cereals and pulses.

The country is facing a serious deficit of mash and masoor and importing these pulses.

The minister said farmers should increase the production of the two pulses to ensure profitability.

He said a mechanism was under consideration to introduce minimum support prices for farmers to produce pulses and cereals after consulting the provincial governments.

The minister urged the provinces to allocate adequate funds for agricultural research.

The federal government used to allocate Rs30 billion to Rs32bn in the budget but this level of amount was not in the provincial budgets after devolution of departments, he said.

Bosan said the cost of crop production in Pakistan was higher as compared to other countries, particularly the neighbouring country which gave maximum subsidies to farmers.

He said the government could not afford to give enough subsidies and for this reason the farmers had been advised to grow other crops too.

Bosan said the ministry would table a plant breeders’ rights bill before the National Assembly in its next session. It had taken 11 years to get enforced the seed bill, he said, adding that seven varieties of maize from the private sector had been approved.

The federal committee reviewed the performance of Kharif crops and was informed that the sugarcane production this year was estimated at 65.4m tonnes from 1.1m hectares and rice production at 6.6m tonnes from 2.7m hectares.

About 25.48m tonnes of wheat was produced over 9.18m hectares.

The production level declined by 1.9 per cent from the previous year’s 25.98m tonnes because of severe rains at the harvesting time.

A strategy prepared to achieve the target for the coming season envisages increased loan facilities, availability of quality certified seeds, timely availability and supply of fertilisers and promotion of their balanced use, and increase in supply and use of herbicides.

The government has allocated Rs100m for giving loans to farmers.

Farmers who do not own collateral property will be the main beneficiaries of the facility.

The committee was informed that irrigation water availability for the current Rabi season was estimated at 25.27m acre-feet, while the average usage was 23.67m acre-feet. Overall, no shortage is anticipated for the current season from the Indus basin system.

The committee was informed that availability of certified wheat seed would be 26.1pc of the requirement.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2015

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