Benefitting farmers: Durable solutions sought to increase productivity

Agriculture secretary calls for efficient mechanism, technology upgrade

FAISALABAD: Agricultural experts should come up with durable solutions for the problems of the farming community, and increase productivity, keeping the new challenges in view, said Punjab Agriculture Secretary Muhammad Mahmood on Saturday.

Chairing a meeting at the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, he said the 'high efficiency irrigation system' was not taking off in the country. He sought suggestions from experts regarding its reasons and measures to make it a success story.

"We are launching a scheme of 'interest-free loans' for the farming community through smartphones under which Rs25,000 loan will be given for Rabi season and Rs40,000 for Kharif season," he said, adding that in the coming years, increase in per-acre production would be linked to the loan.

He said there existed a huge gap between the productivity of progressive and ordinary farmers; awareness and affordability to modern trend would help small farmers increase production. "We are putting ICT among the top agenda as a step towards dissemination of agricultural information including weather, market, use input and seeds among the farming community, which would help ordinary farmers catch up to the productivity of progressive farmers."

Moreover, he said the government had decreased prices of the input by 17% and had also waived off GST on pesticides. He said in coming years, there will be a further decrease to benefit farmers. "The government is also taking initiatives to establish an Agriculture Hi-tech Machinery Service Centre and has directed the UAF to make the business plan for the purpose," he added.

Mahmood called for the development of technologies to fight climate change which has emerged as a potential threat and urged experts to work on a technology of drilling borehole in every acre to benefit small farmers.

He said that the government was working on drip irrigation on 20,000 acre in the province in which farmers will pay only 20% of the cost. The system will be run on solar energy.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 12^th, 2016.

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