HYDERABAD, Jan 21: The Adviser to the President on food and agriculture, Shafi Niaz, has urged the farmers’ community to form strong organizations for highlighting their problems and issues and safeguarding their interests.

Speaking at a seminar on sugar-beet cultivation, organized by the Agriculture Extension Department with the help of local growers near Dumbalo village, Badin district, on Sunday, he said that the farmers’ organizations should be strengthened on the pattern of APTMA, APSMA and other organizations of traders and industrialists.

Strong farmers’ organizations can prove greatly helpful to solve the problems faced by the agriculture sector, particularly in view of the introduction of free global economy, he said.

He said that the federal government would take necessary measures to help Sindh for sowing of sugar-beet crop and setting up beet sugar industry, adding that Sindh was an ideal province for successful beet cultivation.

Speaking on the occasion, Sindh agriculture minister Hassan Ali Chaniho said that the lower Sindh has been pioneer in the introduction of new crops like sugarcane and banana, and now successful cultivation of sugar-beet.

“If industrialists come forward and promote beet sugar industry, the lower Sindh has the potential to bring a revolution in producing cheaper sugar,” he added.

He said that in view of the water shortage, the cropping pattern had to be changed in the larger interest of the farmers community and added that in the upper Sindh, rice had to be replaced by cotton and in the lower Sindh sugarcane by sugar-beet. More such low delta corps were planned by the agriculture department, he added.

He said that sugar-beet could even be cultivated on marginal and saline lands, adding that the crop matured in five to six months as against 12 to 15 months of sugarcane.

He said that the sugar content in beet was registered from 12 to 18pc while the leaves of the crop provided food to dairy animals.

For sugar-beet, 20 to 24 inches of water was required whereas sugarcane took 90 to 100 inches of irrigation water, Chaniho said.

He assured the farmers that he would pursue the case for establishment of beet sugar factories in the lower Sindh and added that the Sindh government had given permission for such mill near Matli on Tando Ghulam Ali Road but the concerned industrialist had failed to start the factory.

The minister said that the main problem of the farmers was marketing of their produce at reasonable rates. He said that the government was initiating measures in this regard particularly ensuring export of agricultural products for which agricultural export processing zone and export crops estates would be established.

Sindh Chamber of Agriculture president Syed Qamar Zaman Shah said that special credit facilities should be provided to industrialists for setting up beet sugar mills.

Sindh Abadgar Board president Abdul Majeed Nizamani stressed the need for transfer of technology about better, efficient and optimum use of available water resources to farmers and called upon scientists to evolve drought and pest resistant varieties of different crops. The crop zoning should also be introduced, he said.