Major hindrances in agricultural growth rate in Pakistan

Agriculture is the largest sector of the economy and would stay important for quite some time. The higher growth rate for the agriculture sector than performed in the past is imperative for a rapid overall growth of the economy, macroeconomic stability, employment generation, and reduction in rural poverty in Pakistan. The leading factors in terms of their contribution to agricultural growth in the past are less likely to play the same important role in growth of the sector in future.

The major hindrances in agricultural growth rate in Pakistan are:

1.      The shortage of irrigation water: It would be the most limiting factor in the coming years and there is a dire need to maximize output per drop of water through developing/adopting water conserving technologies, enhancing irrigation efficiency, and rationalizing the acreage under crops that use water more extensively and in which the country does have comparative advantage. Additional reservoirs need to be built soon to store every drop of water in excess of what is required to regularly flow in the sea for deltaic conservation. Of course, this optimal flow requires a proper quantification by the impartial experts/agency.  The expansion of cultivated area has already slowed down. The culturable waste lands of 9 million hectares may offer good opportunity for bringing in more lands into production however it would require huge investments and enhanced water availability. Improvement of 1.83 million hectares of cultivated saline/sodic lands being in canal commands may make a cheaper potential source.

2.      Use of conventional Research tools: The factors like higher cropping intensity, increased fertilizer, and intensive use of pesticides are expected to play relatively a less important role in future. Thus Pakistan has to rely more heavily on productivity enhancement through technological change and improvement of technical efficiency for the desired rapid agricultural growth in future.  While the conventional breeding need to be continued in future it no longer offer any significant breakthroughs in the yield potentials and in providing solution to the newly emerging complex problems like pests, diseases, and drought stress. Therefore, the application of recent advances in the field of agricultural biotechnology is crucial to increase the crop and livestock productivity, improve nutritional quality, broaden crop tolerance against biotic and abiotic stresses, and enhance crop resistance against pests and diseases. The tools of modern biotechnology are more precise and involve shorter time for development of new strains of improved crop and livestock. It is envisaged that the next breakthrough in agricultural  productivity would be due to recent developments in plant molecular biology, genetic engineering, and rapid advancement in genomics

3.      Inefficient and weak Agricultural Research System: The national agricultural research system (NARS) is poorly funded, ill equipped, weakly linked with international and national stakeholders, thinly staffed with mostly low capacity and unmotivated scientific manpower, lack autonomy, and generally mismanaged. The NARS cannot deliver up to the future expectations without funding at a higher level, essential human resource development, provision of modern laboratories and good library facilities, creation of a nice working environment, and offering the scientists good career opportunities and financial incentives. 

4.      Poverty: Food insecurity in Pakistan is a product of poverty and inadequate food availability. The term food poverty is commonly used to determine the level of poverty viz-a-viz food security in a country. During the past two decades, 1987-2007, food poverty incidence in the country shows that about one-third of  the households were living below the food poverty line and they were not meeting their nutritional requirements. The incidence of food poverty is higher in rural areas (35 per cent), than in urban areas (26 per cent).

Urban and rural areas, however, do not differ much in terms of calorie intake per capita, the differences across the four provinces are also not substantial. The problem lies in the non-equity of food distribution within each of these categories and even within the members of the household. The value of food items produced and consumed is about 19 per cent of the total monthly household food expenditure. The proportion of the food items received as ‘wages in kind and consumed’ is less than one per cent. Households located in urban areas use their incomes to buy food from the market, while rural households produce substantial proportion of food required for their subsistence.