Horticulture: an obvious solution
Photo: AFP
Food security is frequently defined in terms of food availability, but it has four fundamental components: food availability, access, utilisation and stability.
Food security refers to the condition in which the entire population has continuous economic, social and physical access to adequate, nutritious and hygienic food that meets their nutritional needs to support an active lifestyle.
Development and poverty alleviation can occur by ensuring adequate food security across all demographic spectrums; individual, household, national, regional and global.
Food security is a major concern in developing countries such as Pakistan. The country has the world’s sixth largest population of more than 200 million with 3% annual growth rate. As a result, food requirements are constantly increasing.
According to the World Food Programme, more than 48% of Pakistan’s population is food insecure. The erstwhile Fata has the greatest volume of food insecurity (67.7%), closely followed by Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), exhibiting 61.2% and 56.2% food insecurity respectively.
Pakistan is among countries that are highly affected by climate change. Recent floods have wiped out many agricultural crops and affected the availability and supply of various vegetables, fruits and other staple crops. Due to this, Pakistan has had to import several staple foods from other countries during the current fiscal year.
Exchange rate fluctuation and economic downfall are enhancing the country’s import bill that has caused an unnatural hike in food prices and people have far less access to healthy and fresh food. This situation is projected to worsen in the coming years.
In 2014, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) discovered severe food insecurity in 10 districts of Pakistan, warranting emergency initiatives, while 28 other districts exhibited crisis-level food insecurity.
Continued drought in the Thar region of Sindh has also exhibited substantial food insecurity. Similarly, Pakistan’s food security analysis shows an alarming situation: the residents of 56 districts have extremely low access to food.
More than 70% of the population is directly or indirectly involved with the agriculture sector that covers an area of 22 million hectares. Out of the total cultivated area, only 6% is under horticultural crops, 3.5% under fruits, 2% under vegetables and 0.5% under ornamental plants.
Out of the total area planted with vegetables, 17% is under potatoes, 15% under chillies, 12% under onions and the rest under 30 different kinds of vegetables.
Due to climate diversity, Pakistan has the potential to grow a diversity of crops. The focus has remained on the production of staple food and most of the cultivated area is covered by cereals or cash crops.
Conventional agricultural cropping pattern is adversely affected due to climate shift and unpredictable natural events (rains, cold, drought and heat).
Horticulture is relatively manageable and productive with an intensive pattern of farming, especially for geo-sensitive regions and farmers with low landholdings. Farmers’ net return from the unit land area is much higher compared to conventional crops and it can provide substantial income to the farmers facing economic threat.
Horticultural crops are well-defined clusters according to the climatic variability of the country. Northern zone has pre-established apricot and grapes clusters in Skardu and Gilgit regions.
Further down in K-P, Punjab and AJK, most of the temperate and sub-temperate fruits are commercially produced. Agriculture in the northern zone is organic in nature and has great potential for further expansion.
Central zone has unique importance due to its canal-fed land and clusters of very valuable crops like citrus, guava, mango, dates, banana and potato.
Similarly, the western zone comprising Balochistan and parts of K-P is well known for production of premium quality apple, dates and grapes. Focused involvement of industry in value addition and food processing can help to spur the economy of the country.
To meet the ever-increasing food requirement of urban areas, it is inevitable to consider urban and peri-urban horticulture (UPH) as an integral part of agriculture production system with focus on generating employment, food security and income generation for the urban poor.
The production of horticultural crops in urban and peri-urban areas will change the culinary habits towards fruits and vegetables. This will decrease the dependency on conventional agricultural produce and ensure high-quality food along with better returns for producers.
Horticultural products are highly perishable and in order to ensure freshness and high-quality supplies for urban areas, improved infrastructure, storage facilities, efficient transport system and efficient distribution system are required, which will increase the cost for end-consumers.
However, UPH can provide the opportunity closer to consumption areas and by introducing technologies that can be handled by individual families.
Each of the horticultural products requires a specific supply chain management. Quality is unsatisfactory due to conventional farming, non-judicious use of inputs, pre-harvest and post-harvest problems.
Thus, the use of various new horticultural technologies such as integrated disease and pest management, organic cultivation through biological resources, kitchen gardening, minimum or zero tillage, high-density planting, bio-fertilisation, fertigation, drip irrigation, protected cultivation such as greenhouses and tunnels, use of hybrid seeds and improved cultivars can greatly increase fruit and vegetable production in Pakistan.
By looking at the price and production statistics of a few years, it can be noted that prices of certain horticultural commodities go up in the specific period of a year when demand and supply balance is disturbed due to low or distant production.
Prominent examples are daily-use vegetables like tomato, chillies, lemon, bell pepper, cucumber and coriander. Specifically, after the devastating flooding in 2022, prices of vegetables have increased in the range of 40-60% on average, which raises issues of availability and affordability for most of the consumers.
Furthermore, farmers from regions with natural possibility of growing off-season vegetables earn high profits compared to central and southern lands. Smart manipulation by using protected structures and low-cost materials can help farmers from central and southern regions to produce early or late-season vegetables and fetch high profits.
Production of vegetables under poly tunnels and frost covers can bring summer vegetables one month prior to the regular market.
By virtue of early maturing hybrid varieties, multiple cropping cycles are now possible in a single unit area, adding to the financial stability of farmers. A small shift in production paradigm can reduce the demand and supply gap, ensuring year-round stable prices for end-consumers.
Intervention from the authorities and government in terms of training and empowerment of the farming community in relation to technology adaptation, quality seed provision, input availability and microfinance opportunities is imperative.
Subsidies on peri-urban horticultural farms, crop calendars specific to ecological zones, technology transfer and capacity building of farmers will help to motivate the growers to shift towards high-value horticultural crops.
Furthermore, discrete steps should be taken to develop and strengthen existing supply chains to ensure the freshness and quality of produce and reduction in post-harvest losses.
The writer is Chairman of the Department of Horticulture at PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi
Published in The Express Tribune, December 26th, 2022.
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