AGRICULTURE has received some attention during the PML-N government, but the gains made in this sector apparently remained Punjab-centric, and quite understandably so.

Essentially a provincial subject, agricultural growth relies on policymaking at provincial level, and its smooth implementation depends, among other things, on the relationship of a certain province with the federation.

PML-N governments in charge of the federation and of Punjab enjoyed enviable working relationship during the past five years, which could be a reason for Punjab’s better performance in agriculture.

From enabling farmers to get more bank loans to equipping them with modern farming techniques and technology and from making quality inputs available to small growers to upgrading agricultural research, Punjab outshined other provinces in each area.

Sindh, the second-largest province both in agricultural output and in population, made some progress in achieving higher agricultural productivity, but its PPP-led government did not get a fair treatment from the federation, officials of the province complain.

Overall growth of the agriculture sector hit a 13-year high of 3.8pc in the previous fiscal year, but a number of issues in agriculture productivity and in local and foreign marketing of farming products still remain

Water shortages persisted more in Sindh, allegedly due to unfair distribution and bank credit disbursement, officials lament. Data for the past five years somehow validates their complaints.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, agriculture remained on the back burner for a host of reasons. In KP, for instance, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leadership focused more on its anti-Nawaz Sharif campaign, finding little time to put its own house in order.

As for Balochistan, it has been run with political remote control changing hands and with greater interference of non-political forces in the name of security. That obviously left little room for boosting agriculture there on a par with Punjab or Sindh, so much so that the much-trumpeted Balochistan Bank could not be established to enable farmers to have greater access to formal finance. Water shortage across the province became pressing at times, damaging crops and livestock.

Nevertheless, overall growth in the agriculture sector hit a 13-year high of 3.8pc in 2017-18, the last year of the outgoing political governments at the federation and in provinces.

When these governments took over back in 2012-13, agriculture sector’s real growth that year stood at 2.7pc. Despite a nominal growth rate of about 0.3pc in the 2015-16 fiscal year, the five-year average annual growth between 2013-14 and 2017-18 remained above 2.4pc, SBP statistics reveal.

For the past five years, a couple of things have propelled growth in agriculture and one of the most visible among them is a substantial increase in banks’ lending to this sector. In 2012-13, banks’ gross lending to agriculture had totalled Rs336.2bn. Five years later, in the first ten months of the current fiscal year, the volume of such lending has shot up to Rs618bn and full-year lending is expected to reach somewhere close to Rs876bn, according to the targets assigned to banks.

Whereas this volumetric rise in gross lending to agriculture sector in past five years is a welcome development and it had some good impact on productivity of major crops and livestock sub-sectors, gross fixed capital formation in agriculture remains low.

In 2012-13, fixed capital formation in agriculture saw a rise of 11.9pc but a higher rate — 13.1pc — in 2014-15, according to the latest SBP annual report.

A lack of sufficient gross fixed capital formation means a large part of growth potential of this sector still remains untapped. That should not have been the case. Provinces should have encouraged the private sector to invest in agricultural projects, and modernising agriculture should have been prioritised to boost productivity.

In the name of mechanising agriculture, the nation has seen a few subsidy schemes revolving around tractors and tube wells during the past five years. But no big initiative has been undertaken for modernising agriculture except for some efforts in the areas of tunnel farming, economising water use in agriculture, and animal healthcare.

Lots of issues in agriculture productivity and in local and foreign marketing of farming products still remain. Some of them (eg no or little increase in arable land mass, water shortages, high-yield gaps, post-harvest losses, broken value-chains, shallow base and poor marketing of exportable food products, insufficient financing of agricultural research, unavailability of credible data on livestock and scant private sector investment in agriculture) often get enough media spotlight — but not enough attention from the relevant departments.

Just how serious our federal and provincial governments have been in attending to issues related to agriculture can be gauged from the fact that it took them almost full five years to come up with a national food security policy to serve as a pivot for all other policies related to agriculture.

It was not before April 5, 2018 that our federal cabinet approved this policy. Ideally, it should have been developed in the first year of the present political regime that came into power in June 2013.

On May 17, just two weeks before completing its current tenure, the PML-N federal government launched Pakistan Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy 2018-25. This policy, too, should ideally have come up much earlier.

Launching such voluminous policy documents months or weeks before getting out of power corridors can never make a government proud of its achievements. Governments can take more real pride in effective implementation of their policies during their days in power. However, one can hope the agriculture sector may receive more attention in the days to come.

But there are some valid concerns in the minds of public. Two of them include: what will be the level of federal-provincial harmony and coordination in the next political set-up, as it is much-needed for achieving higher agricultural growth? And in what ways the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will really benefit our agriculture sector and have we ensured that in CPEC-led growth era our agriculture is not reduced to just a cultivating ground for the Chinese interests?

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, May 28th, 2018