HYDERABAD, Oct 10: The Sindh Agriculture Forward Group has appealed to the prime minister to come to the rescue of agriculture sector by solving the problem confronted by it.

The group, in a communication to the prime minister and federal ministers for agriculture and communications growers were compelled to buy poor quality seed due to unavailability of high-yielding and pest-resistant certified seeds.

The group’s chairman, Gada Hussain Mahessar, said that the substandard seed would never help improve production or the quality of crops. The government was spending millions of rupees on seed research with little result, he said.

Giving evidence of substandard seeds in the market, he said that the sunflower seeds supplied by a multinational company produced 25 per cent less yield per acre last year. Similarly, the germination of hybrid paddy seed supplied to the growers this year was not more than 10 per cent, he said.

Mr Mahessar said that everybody liked to reiterate the cliche that ‘agriculture is the backbone of country’s economy and a major employer in rural areas where 70 per cent of the population live.’ But this was just lip service.

No government had till this day taken any effective steps to develop the sector with the result that except for rice, the country had to spend tens of millions of dollars every year on the import of food items, he said.

The reason the agricultural policies did not correspond to the realities on ground was they were formulated in the cosiness of air conditioned rooms without assessing the harsh realities, he said adding that the only thing they took into consideration was commission.

He said that judicious distribution of irrigation water was another major hurdle to the high production of crops with the funds allocated for the improvement of irrigation system going down the drain.

Mr Mahessar praised the reduction in the price of phosphate fertilizer (DAP) for the coming Rabi crops but feared that the proposed 15 per cent raise in the price of urea would nullify its benefits.

He said that the stockholders of urea were busy hoarding it to reap windfall dividends because they knew that the farmers used more urea than DAP. Only one bag of DAP was used per acre against two bags of urea, he added.

He expressed surprise that despite fall in oil prices in the world market the government had not given any relief to the growers who had to consume 60 per cent of diesel oil directly or indirectly in the agricultural machinery, transportation of agriculture inputs as well as crops.

Over and above all the other problems, the sector was now faced with a new problem created by highway traffic police who ordered the trucks not to carry load above 20 metric tons. Trucks manufacturers certified that a 10-wheeler with three axels could carry 23.5 to 27.5 metric tons, and it was also mentioned in the truck’s registration book, he said.

The container load was fixed at 24 metric tons for rice export, which had made it even more difficult to comply with the highway traffic police’s instructions, he said.

Beside, the truck owners charged for 25 metric tons load even if the load was 20 metric tons passing on the financial burden to the growers who had to pass it on to the consumers.