Professional delegations are regularly exchanged between countries with the idea of learning from each other’s experiences, improving on their own performance and for transfer of the latest technology for the concerned sector. The visit of a Pakistani agriculture delegation to China is thus to be seen in this context and viewed as an effort by Islamabad to gain knowledge from China which has made giant strides in the field of agriculture.
A few things must be put in place before such a visit. First, social conditions prevailing in the country to be visited with a view to ensuring that the country of the visiting delegation is in a position to genuinely benefit from the visit.
Second, this is actually more important than the first point, the composition of the visiting delegation, that is, whether its members are equipped for learning from a professional visit or they regard the trip as some kind of picnic.
In the case of Pakistan, this is unfortunately not a strong point. Delegations are composed of officials/bureaucrats of various levels and if any professionals are on board, they have no voice in negotiations, let alone a role in decision-making at some later stage.
Bureaucrats tend to regard foreign visits as privilege of their job and not necessarily meant for obtaining concrete results. A certain lack of commitment is officially written in the three-year mandate for senior positions. Regrettably, in the case of a visit to a country like China, the expertise required to derive benefit from the trip is just not there.
Further, the China has a highly disciplined society in which each citizen is assigned a role and the citizen is geared for fulfilling that role while a free-for-all prevails in Pakistan due to a combination of military, civil bureaucracy and politicians representing vested interests ruling the roost. Transplantation of experiences thus becomes difficult in these circumstances. There also is the question of the extent of capability and commitment available in making transplantation of ideas and experiences a success.
These and many other factors make the very idea of a visit by an agriculture delegation from Pakistan to China look like a futile exercise. Still, now that a visit - not the first one between the two countries has taken place, one would like to know what has been achieved by delegates.
The visit commenced in the first week of this month and was scheduled to be over by the middle of second week of January. Eid ul Azha holidays have possibly been the reason why nothing was been reported about the visit. The only information has been a Beijing datelined report about Chinese willingness to establish agro-based industrial units in Pakistan and develop cooperation in water management and fishery sectors.
One wishes the delegation members managed to identify the strength of the Chinese agriculture. The country has succeeded in striking equilibrium between supply and demand at all levels. As a result, there are no problems of shortages or of excess produce.
In Pakistan, the size of produce and demand for it is a perennial problem that confronts practically every crop with the result that prices menacingly escalate and plunge leaving producers unsure of the reward - or punishment their labour would yield.
Next come wastages. They are high in every crop in Pakistan while China has managed to minimize, if not eliminate them altogether.
How much of the produce is lost during different stages of harvesting and stocking of crops has been assessed more than once but first, there is no agreement on the veracity of estimates and second, there has been no effort to counter wastages. As a result, the agriculture sector is besieged by wastages which are in fact increasing over time. Pakistan must try to emulate the Chinese example in this regard.
China has emerged as a major cotton producing country, a field that is vital to Pakistan’s economy with its over 60 per cent contribution to all exports. China has developed a method of nursery sowing of cotton in temperatures not associated with the crop. It is cultivated at 8ºC temperature and transplanted at 15ºC.
Reports inform that not a plant dies in the process of transplantation. The temperature at the time of sowing of the crop also ensures against pest attacks that are a permanent devastating feature of cotton. Pests indeed cause major losses to Pakistan’s cotton while China has effectively countered them.
China produces hybrid rice but more important than the type of rice is the method for raising and transplanting nursery of the crop. It has developed simple mechanized equipment that helps increase plant population substantially and although partly manual, the method saves considerable time spent in totally manual transplantation.
The equipment has been experimented with in Pakistan but somehow or the other, the authorities have not decided to propagate its use. The equipment is easy to manufacture locally and should not be costly either. It should in fact be within the reach of small farmers. The introduction of what the Chinese call ‘parachute’ transplantation is one case of learning from China and, at the same time, reluctance to take the experience to the field.
There is a refusal to propagate the seabuckthorn bush- that after taking an excellent start is another example of not learning from the Chinese model. Seabuckthorn is a wild growth in most parts of Northern Areas but whereas China has put it to multiple economic uses, it largely remains the source of fuel wood and material for fencing fields in Pakistan.
The bush has the potential for revolutionizing living conditions in northern areas by bringing prosperity to the populace that currently has a high percentage living under conditions of extreme poverty.
As the former President of Pakistan Farooq Leghari and his Secretary Agriculture, Dr Zafar Altaf paid more than one visit to China to learn from the country’s experience in agriculture and one of their successes was supporting plantation of seabuckthorn in the Northern Areas.
If the programme may have helped protect many of the earthquake-stricken areas from ruination as the roots of the bush consolidates land too if it wasn’t abandoned later; the occurrence of landslides would surely have been reduced. That programme can still be revived.
China produces over 200 medicinal, cosmetic and food items from the fruit of the bush. Chinese success has been instrumental in some European countries and Canada growing seabuckthorn and using extract from its fruit for medicines and cosmetics. Seabuckthorn offers the ideal field for promoting agro-based industries. One hopes the activities previously started can be revived.
Another field in which Pakistan can benefit from coordination with China is production of low cost pesticides. This field has already been effectively and, for the agriculture of Pakistan, productively explored for Pakistan by the private sector. But a lot more can be done. This, however, is topic for a separate and independent discussion. A reference should suffice here.
There is a lot Pakistan can learn from China but this is possible only with will and professional commitment. At this point in time, this is the biggest handicap of Pakistan though not merely in agriculture but in all spheres of life.
Most regrettably, we are unwilling to learn and improve because the governments are more concerned with their survival than the betterment of any field and to ensure welfare of the masses.