Experts stress need to promote olive cultivation

Say crop will enhance income of farmers and eliminate poverty

ISLAMABAD:

Speakers at an International Olive Conference on Tuesday stressed the need for promoting olive cultivation to enhance the income of farming communities living in natural resource-stressed areas to eliminate poverty.

Minister for National Food Security and Research Syed Fakhar Imam said the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Khuzdar was the oldest engineering university of Balochistan, which was providing a technical base and research platform to youngsters and contributing its due share in socio-economic uplift of the country in general and the province in particular.

The minister said 4,000 olive plants were planted in the university premises besides establishing four green tunnels with capacity of 160,000 olive saplings under the efficient and innovative mist irrigation system.

The efficient irrigation system was installed in the university under the Public Sector Development Programme on Olive Project in Pakistan, besides provision of olive plants for 10 acres.

The minister said Balochistan had a vast potential for olive cultivation in terms of natural and other resources, adding that Khuzdar had feasible demographics and cultural heritage having great potential for ideal olive production with 28% oil content.

Sharing his views, Olive Cultivation on Commercial Scale in Pakistan Project Director Dr Muhammad Tariq said olive cultivation in the country had been gaining momentum as output during the current season was projected to cross 11,000 tons.

He said the country expected to extract about 13,000 tons of extra virgin olive worth millions of dollars that would help to boost farm income with less investment and use of inputs.

He said olive had been successfully cultivated over 27,000 hectares of land across the country and it was set to extend to over 70,000 hectares to turn marginal lands into productive areas for enhancing the income of small-scale growers.

“This initiative will help to put semi-barren and marginal lands under high-value crop plantations in far-off areas of the country,” he said, adding, that besides it would also help to eliminate poverty by bringing the most vulnerable communities to safety nets through agricultural interventions.

Under the olive cultivation project, he said farmers were provided about 550,000 plants last year and this year over 675,000 plants would be distributed among them to promote olive cultivation on a large scale.

Tariq said the government intended to provide about 2.2 million plants and bring about 50,000 hectares under olive cultivation by the end of 2022-23.

He underlined that the government was paying special attention to promoting olive cultivation in Balochistan and provided about 700,000 plants to growers where were cultivated in 22 districts, adding that out of the total cultivated plants about 30% have started producing fruits.

To facilitate Balochistan growers, five oil processing units have been installed there, besides farmers were provided training in product value addition and its processing.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 21^st, 2020.

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