Some heartening news from the Pakistan Observer, especially since post-flood food disruptions have been a major worry: Despite adverse climate change, droughts and flash floods in the country, agriculture sector registered a significant growth during last three years. The area under major crops cultivation including wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane was increased and per acare crop out-put was also registered tremendous increases, Ministry of Agriculture sources told APP while highlighting three-year performance of the sector.The sources said that the out-put of major crops including wheat was increased from 20.96 million tons in 2007-08 to 23.31 million tons in 2009-10,cotton production stood at 12.69 million bales in 2009-10 as against 11.65 million bales of 2007-08. Meanwhile, rice production was also increased from 5.56 million tons in 2007-08 to 6.88 million tons during 2009-10 and sugarcane production was recorded at 49.37 million tons in the year 2009-19.
However, over the last four decades agriculture has on the average, growth at an annual rate of 4.3 per cent, the sources added. The government, they said was striving hard to make agriculture sector competitive and profitable through enhanced crop production on sustainable basis and made a record increase in the support price of wheat to Rs.950 per 40 kg for year 2008-09 as against Rs.425 per 40 kg in the preceding year.
The support price resulted in record production of about 24 million tons of wheat during 2008-09 and 23.3 million tons during 2009-10 making the country self-sufficient in wheat production. “Production of major crops achieved over the last three years including record procurement of 9.23 and 6.71 million tons of wheat during 2008-09 and 2009-10, respectively”, they remarked….
A wheat field in Punjab, Pakistan, shot by Ammarkh aka Ammarkh
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