HYDERABAD, Oct 1: The federal minister for food and agriculture, Mr Sikandar Hayat Bosan, has sent a clear massage to owners of sugar mills to start crushing sugarcane from Oct 15 in Sindh and from Nov 1 in Punjab.

The minister made it clear that the crushing season did not mean warming up of boilers but the start of crushing sugarcane and there should be no ambiguity in this regard.

He was speaking at a news conference at the circuit house after a detailed meeting with the growers of Sindh here on Friday. He congratulated Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim for issuing firm orders that the crushing season must be started on Oct 15.

The minister said the government would not tolerate delaying tactics in this regard and would take strict action against those mills which did not start the crushing season on time.

He said this would facilitate the farmers to cultivate wheat on time. He said the federal government would announce a comprehensive wheat policy on Wednesday and launch a "grow more wheat" campaign through electronic and print media in regional languages to educate and motivate farmers.

Mr Bosan said the wheat policy would include the prices of inputs and other incentives. He said the government of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was very sincere in streamlining the working of the agriculture sector.

He said the interest of the government could be gauged from the fact that the last year the wheat support price was announced on Nov 23 but this time the support price had been announced much earlier.

The federal minister regretted that there was a wide gap in per acre yield of wheat crop of progressive farmers and conventional growers though both enjoyed the same facilities.

He said the per acre yield of a progressive farmer of Sindh, Mr Nizamani, was 50 maunds per acre but of other farmers, it was hardly 24 to 25 maunds per acre. He exhorted the wheat growers to give up their causal attitude towards farming and make all out efforts to increase the per acre yield of their crop.

He said if the wheat growers concentrated on increasing per acre yield, Pakistan would start exporting wheat which would greatly benefit not only the country but also the farming community.

Mr Bosan said the government was constantly monitoring the cotton situation and added that the government had fixed the minimum support price of cotton at Rs925 per maund. He dispelled the impression that the TCP had a ceiling of purchasing only 10,000 maunds.

He said the federal cabinet had taken the decision that the TCP would purchase unlimited quantity of cotton and reiterated that no ceiling or limit had been fixed in this regard.

He said he had successful talks with the ginners of Sindh in Karachi on Thursday in this regard. He said the TCP had been given clear cut orders to start massive buying of cotton for which it had already been provided funds by the federal ministry of finance.