Published by City Farmer, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture

The Future of Pakistan Agriculture

Farzana Panhwar
Email: Farzanapanhwar@yahoo.com
And: farzanapanhwar@hotmail.com

On this web page we have placed the headings General and Conclusion. The complete 27 page paper can be downloaded here. (Word DOC 226KB) The Future of Pakistan Agriculture

October 13, 2006, We have added these two recent papers by the author.

The Future of Vegetables in Pakistan

Post Harvest Technology of Fruits and Vegetables

General

Pakistan is situated between the latitudes of 24° and 37° north and longitudes of 61° to 75° east, stretching over 1 600 kilometres from north to south and 885 kilometres from east to west, with a total area of 796 095 square kilometres. It has a subtropical and semi-arid climate. The annual rainfall ranges from 125 mm in the extreme southern plains to 500 to 900 mm in the sub-mountainous and northern plains. About 70 percent of the total rainfall occurs as heavy downpours in summer from July to September, originating from the summer monsoons, and 30 percent in winter. Summers, except in the mountainous areas, are very hot with a maximum temperature of more than 40°C, while the minimum temperature in winter is a few degrees above the freezing point.

According to the usual Pakistani classification irrigation consists of:

• Government canals: 6.38 million ha in 2001/02, of which 58 percent in the Punjab and 29 percent in Sindh province;
• private canas: 0.43 million ha, of which 81 percent are in NWFP;
• tubewells: 3.45 million ha, of which 82 percent are in Punjab province;
• open wells: 0.2 million ha, of which 55 percent are in Punjab province;
• canals and tubewells: 7.24 million ha, all of them in Punjab province;
• other means: 0.18 million ha.

The total irrigated area is 18 million ha. About 4 million ha is rainfed. The main irrigated crops are wheat, rice, sugar cane and cotton. Owing to inadequate water availability in winter (storage capacity is too small) and at the beginning and end of summer, cropping intensity is exceptionally low. According to a World Bank report, Pakistan does not have enough reservoir capacity in its irrigation system to store seasonal waters. According to the Soil Survey of Pakistan (Mian and Javed, 1993), 2.8 million hectares of irrigated land is affected by salinity ranging from patchy salinity to dense saline sodic soils.
http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/007/y5460e/ y5460e06.htm

Conclusion

In order the meet the 21st Century agriculture requirement, Pakistan need to change their crop varieties, with high yielding , drought and salt resistant with better nutrition value. And having better shelf life .They also need special training and universities of agriculture also needs to be change their syllabus according to new agriculture requirement of the country. Replacement of field crop with horticulture crop for export .Precession land leveling to save water .Strong horticulture organization. Training people in horticulture science in USA, Australia and South Africa. Building strong post harvest technologies for export. Post harvest transport facilities in land and by Sea Educating farmers in new technologies Involvement of private sector in agriculture, education, extension and research .Immediate replacement of horticulture varieties of food and vegetables. Development of floriculture and horticulture. Processing of surplus horticulture products are those not suitable for export.

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