The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has issued a call for a review of the agricultural policies, warning against possible food insecurity in view of the rising graph of population in the country in near future.
“If steps are not taken on war footing, food security would shatter the economic structure and the country will be compelled to spend billions of dollars on imports to feed its huge population,” the LCCI office-bearers warned in a statement released on Friday.
“If we stayed where we are today in terms of cropped area and yield per hectare, we will have 30 per cent less food available per capita in the next two decades,” observed LCCI President Sheikh Muhammad Arshad and Senior Vice President Almas Hyder.
Although Pakistan’s almost 43 per cent labour force was dependent on agriculture, the yield gap in the four major crops of Pakistan was three times from the best producers in the world such as China and Egypt, they said.
Low yield had contributed to poverty in rural areas besides forcing the country to import agriculture produce to feed its population, they said.
“Factors that are recommended to improve the yield are through large scale introduction of hybrid seeds and mechanised farming, high efficienty irrigation systems such as drip irrigation and reduction in wastage of crop through introduction of privately-owned storage facilities and cold storage facilities,” added the LCCI office-bearers.
They further said that the 21st century belonged to biotechnology and Pakistan had tremendous potential to emerge as biotechnology leader but to achieve the goal, the government assisted by the private sector, scientists and researchers would have to work hand in hand.
The LCCI statement said that Pakistan’s agriculture sector was losing heavily due to insufficient utilisation of biotechnology as the magic progress of agriculture sector was only due to genetically modified crops.
They said that “the country’s agriculture sector has a huge potential and it continues to be the single largest and dominant driving force for growth as well as the main source of livelihood for 66 per cent of Pakistan’s population but it has always faced two major problems: lower production per acre and wastage of around 40 per cent of production in the form of post-harvest losses due to insufficient utilisation of biotechnology”.
The LCCI office-bearers said that the federal and provincial governments should focus on promotion of research and quality crops since green revolution was only possible through genetic engineering. They said that Pakistan would have to focus on genetically modified and hybrid crops to tap true potential of agricultural productivity in the country.
Stressing the need for establishment of institutes both at provincial and federal level for creating awareness among the farming community about genetically modified (GM) technology, they said that sustainability and improvement in crops yield were the major challenges to meet upcoming threats of increasing population and depleting water resources.
“Biotechnology has shown considerable potential to raise agricultural productivity by addressing problems not solved through conventional research. Among other application of biotechnology, development of genetically modified organasims is the promising tool to facilitate plant breeding in development of crops to insect and tolerant to herbicide,” the LCCI office-bearers said.
They said that “genetic modified crops have contributed to sustainable development in several significant ways including: contributing to food security and more affordable food, conserving biodiversity, alleviation of poverty and hunger, mitigating climate change and reducing greenhouses gases, contributing to the cost-effective production of biofuels and above all by contributing to sustainable economic benefits.”
The LCCI office-bearers urged the government to patronise scientists working for the technology promotion and its upgradation in the country.
“Pakistan is a sleeping technology giant, the day it gets up, Pakistan would be another China.” They said that it was very unfortunate that the country did not have any framework for transfer of technology, deploring that there were 400 research institutions in the country and their performance was not up the mark.