Pakistan benefits from EU’s food facility

KARACHI: Pakistan is among 50 countries which are receiving the €1 billion European Union (EU) Food Facility, to ease the effects of high food prices. The project had begun in 2009 and has now started to show results, said an EU report.

In Pakistan, farmers had been growing less produce over the past two years as costs of seeds and fertilisers shot up, due to dry weather conditions and consequently food prices had also increased, the report said on Wednesday.

However, this year, these farmers managed to put a stop to the downward spiral thanks to the assistance from a joint EU, World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) project under the EU Food Facility.

Instead of going into debt, 23,000 Pakistani farmers received 400kg of wheat from WFP to last them through the lean season before the harvest.

That enabled them to buy seeds, fertilisers and water pumps that growers used to plant a bumper crop. “In irrigated areas, production has almost doubled because of the quality inputs received,” the EU report said.

On 31 March 2010, European Commission adopted “Communication- an EU policy” framework to assist the developing countries in addressing food security challenges, which sets out policy priorities for years to come in order to move forward in achieving international target.

Published in the Express Tribune, June 17^th, 2010.