ISLAMABAD, July 15: The federal government has allocated Rs415 million to strengthen the livestock economy under a multi-dimensional package to be completed over a period of three years.

This is the largest outlay for the livestock sector that constitutes 9.4 per cent of the national gross product and 37.5 per cent of agricultural value-added. During 2000-01, its contribution to the exports earnings amounted to Rs53 billion — 12.34 per cent of total foreign exchange earning.

The allocations to this sector in the public sector development programme, nevertheless, were less than two per cent. Consequently, diseases have been rampant among livestock entailing enormous losses to the people, mainly small farmers.

In order to help the livestock industry develop on healthy lines, Raja Rafaqat Husain Raja, Animal Husbandry Commissioner (AHC), told Dawn the package envisaged to address various issues relating to production, disease control and marketing information system.

The package would be implemented by the provincial governments in coordination with the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock.

Due to weak infrastructure for treatment of diseases, the mortality rate among animals is very high. For this reason, the farmers try to maintain more animals than they can sustain in terms of grazing etc., AHC observed.

This is because a cow, bull, buffalo or goat/sheep, owing to their ready encashability, is like a bank which they can draw upon at time of any emergency. This state of affairs has brought the feed resources under enormous strain.

The package, therefore, envisages to upgrade the diagnostic and treatment facilities for livestock in the countryside.

“Our endeavour,” he said in reply to a question, “would be to stress on per unit productivity instead of merely increasing the numbers of animals.”

According to an FAO report, “2020 — The Next Food Revolution”, the migration of villagers to the urban centres in developing countries entails change of consumption habits. One of the manifestations of this change is the steady increase in demand for meat and milk in the developing countries.

In 1993, they accounted for 47 per cent of output of meat and 32 per cent of milk. By 2020, their share would have risen to 60 per cent and 52 per cent, respectively, the report predicted.

Such growth in the demand for animal products, Raja stressed, offered a unique opportunity for the enhancement of live-stock-related livelihoods. This is especially pertinent for the subsistent farmers in areas unsuitable for cropping — such as in Balochistan, Pothwar in Punjab etc. — where specialized livestock producers maintain a pastoral lifestyle and contribute to the market of animal products.

The exports also caution the government about the recent trends in connection with the livestock production which have long-term implications for environment and wellbeing of traditional keepers of livestock.

As the people move towards cities, they observed, there occurred a concomitant geographic shift of livestock production from temperate and dry areas to warmer, more humid and disease- prone environments, he noted.

Moreover, a change in livestock keeping from a local multipurpose activity to an increasingly market-oriented and vertically-integrated production process. Other features of the changing scenario were: Increasing pressure on, and competition for, common pool grazing and water resources; decreasing importance of ruminant viz-a-viz monogastric livestock species; and a rapid and large-scale spurt in the use of cereal-based feed.

Answering a question about the possibility of increasing the contribution of livestock industry to the exports, the AHC stated that a network of laboratories at national and regional level was being established to ensure that the residues of drugs and pesticides in animal products were within the limits prescribed by WTO.

In this connection, it had been decided to follow the minimum acceptable dosage standards adopted by the European Union. These labs, he was sure, would go a long way towards helping the indigenous livestock industry compete in the international market.