Pakistan loses cotton crop worth $8 billion every year and wastes some 30 million acre foot (MAF) of water because of poor farming practices and lack of research and development, argued former federal minister for industries, Jahangir Khan Tareen, on Sunday at Pakistan Today’s Pre-Budget Seminar. Tareen said that although 60 percent of Pakistani exports were dependent on or related to cotton, the country had yet to exploit the maximum potential from cotton and thus, was lagging behind in terms of selling to other countries. The former industries minister argued that one million cotton bales fetched $1 billion for the economy but investment needed was merely $2 million.
“Even under the available resources – land, water and sunlight – Pakistan can easily produce 20 million cotton bales per annum. But we are hardly producing 12 million bales. This is an opportunity lost,” he contended. Tareen believed that it would be unjustified to pin the blame for these losses squarely on the government, arguing instead that the textile industry – the largest exporting and money-making sector of the economy – was equally responsible for losing this potential. He said that the country had to liberalise research and textile industry had to play its role in developing the culture of research and development, adding that almost every country in the world had similar issues but had improved their production capacity through research.
The former industries minister warned that water scarcity will be the biggest crisis in the near future, but unaware farmers were wasting scarce water resources. He pointed out that the country was wasting 30 MAF extra water for agriculture, which was more than the water available in the River Indus. There was a dire need to rationalise the price of water to avert the water crisis, he proposed.
Speaking about the livestock sector, Tareen pointed out that agriculture had a 21 percent share in GDP, of which 10 percent is related to the dairy and livestock sector. This segment, he said, was providing employment to over eight million subsistence farmers, who reared less than five animals.
But, again, due to lack of research and poor farming practices, they did not have any marketable surplus. As a result, a sector which has a 10 percent share in GDP, does not contribute much towards economy and revenues. Tareen believed that if the government and private sector team up to improve the situation in the dairy and livestock sector, the core of the economy could be changed in merely five years. “This would also help in addressing food inflation problems, as dairy and livestock-related products had 40 percent weightage in the consumer price index,” he concluded.
