Speaking to The Express Tribune, Department of Plant Protection (DPP) Director General Dr Mubarak Ahmed has said that member countries are expected to sign and implement the new standards from December 2014. The standards will be called SaarcGAP that will help member countries improve their system of agriculture and exports.
“Pakistan is particularly interested in swiftly implementing good agriculture practices so that it can sharply increase its farm output,” said the director general of DPP – one of the 14 organisations that work under the Ministry of National Food Security and Research responsible of providing complete quarantine facilities to the fruit and vegetable growers.
According to Ahmed, Saarc countries have been working on proposals of SaarcGAP for quite some time and he was hopeful that the new uniform standards will help the region in every possible way.
The standardisation will also increase awareness against diseases in fruits, vegetables and other agricultural outputs that usually hinder region’s exports, especially in industrialised countries, he added.
Though the GAP has slightly different dimensions for different countries but according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), it includes pre- and post-harvest processes that help produce healthy products without affecting economic, social and environmental sustainability.
The concept of GAP came from Europe when some European supermarket chains adopted EurepGAP in 1997 to bring standardisation in farm management. Later in 2007, to reflect both its global reach and its goal of becoming the leading international GAP standard, EurepGAP changed its name to GLOBALGAP.
Today, this worldwide body sets voluntary standards for the certification of agricultural products around the globe that more and more producers, suppliers and buyers are harmonising their certification standards to match.
New laws coming soon
The DPP is busy drafting new proposals to streamline laws and regulations for imports and exports of all farm products in Pakistan.
“The new drafts will soon be converted to laws through Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs),” said Ahmed. “After becoming laws, the system will work automatically cut down most of the bottlenecks that affect timely imports and exports of different commodities.”
The new laws will soon be updated on DPP’s website, which will increase transparency in the old system marred by hierarchy and corruption. On one hand, traders will be forced to follow standards while they no longer have to bribe government officials to clear consignments, certifications or other necessary documents. DPP shot to prominence in recent months when it took unorthodox measures in enforcing quarantine rules for imports and exports of fresh and other farm products in the country.
After registering mango farms in May and June 2014, DPP is now registering kinnow farms in that can meet certain criterion to export their produce to industrialised countries. The practice helped both the mango growers and exporters this year as they received much better prices in the European Union.
Pakistan has recently started investing in different fruit and vegetable processing technologies and it is expected that some change will be seen from next year’s mango and kinnow exports.
DPP officials believe the country can significantly improve its fruits and vegetable exports but for that, both growers and exporters have to change their approach towards the challenges of efficiency, diseases and global warming and adopt modern methods of farming.
THE WRITER IS A STAFF CORRESPONDENT
Published in The Express Tribune, November 10th, 2014.
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