HYDERABAD, Aug 4: All-out efforts will be made to improve the agricultural base of the province in association and cooperation with farmers as they are the main stakeholders and understand the issues better than anybody else.
This was stated by the provincial minister for agriculture, livestock and fisheries, Sardar Mohammed Muqeem Khan Khoso, while addressing representatives of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture and the Sindh Abadgar Board, who came from all over the province on Sunday to hold a meeting with him.
Mr Khoso said any steps taken to weaken farmers and the agricultural sector will result in weakening the country.
He said the government had attached top priority to improvement of agriculture and agricultural commerce on modern lines.
He called upon the farmers community to join hands in efforts to enhance productivity, promote agricultural trade, and compete in the international markets, besides pointing out gaps and mistakes for improvement.
Speaking on the occasion, Syed Qamar Zaman Shah, President, Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, presented the main issues currently facing the farmers including promotion of sugar beet in lower Sindh.
He informed that the Federal Government had launched a sugar beet project, costing Rs300 million, from which the major share would be given to Sindh and the NWFP.
He said the country was importing Rs42 billion worth of edible oil every year, but no solid effort had been made for assured procurement of oilseed produce from the farmers, and added that proper oilseed development programme had also not been taken up.
He called for discouraging cotton import as surplus cotton is produced. “Not only cotton has been imported again this year, but the TCP is selling its stocks to local buyers at the time Sindh cotton arrives, which is grossly unjustified.”
Mr Shah further demanded that taxes and duties on farmers, inputs, and farm produce should either be done away with or drastically reduced to make the agricultural sector competitive as was being done in India.
He said that even the USA and Europe were providing huge farm subsidies and incentives to boost their agriculture.
Other issues raised by Mr Shah included agriculture income tax, mismanagement of water distribution, water supply rotation programme, lining of water courses, sugarcane cess, payment by the mills to growers, share of the growers in the Karachi Subzi Mandi, banana crops, and closure of the Seed Corporation.
The president of the Sindh Abadgar Board, Abdul Majeed Nizamani, said that continued water shortage had caused huge losses to the farmers, the agriculture industry and trade, and added that sugarcane, mango, wheat, rice, and cotton crops had been heavily affected by drought-like conditions as such the whole of Sindh should be declared as a calamity-affected area with full remission in taxes and loans, and their recovery period may be extended upto December.
He demanded that cheaper electricity, diesel, fertilizers, pesticides, and other inputs should be provided to farmers.
He said that electricity for farming purpose in India was totally free.
He called for providing full compensation to the victims of the Rohri canal breach.
Other farmers present on the occasion demanded processing facilities for dates, a dehydration plant for onions, a tissue culture laboratory, a trace elements laboratory, lacer levelling equipment, stabilization of chilli prices, rehabilitation and de-silting of canals.—APP