Minister for National Food Security and Research, Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan on Tuesday stressed the need to improve agriculture production system on scientific lines to enhance sustainable food production and to meet present and future demands for food in the country.
“This can be done by adopting innovative agricultural practices, improved technologies and sustainable soil management techniques”, the minister said addressing a day-long seminar on Public-Private Partnership to Manage Soil Fertility in Pakistan. The seminar was organized by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) and the US Department for Agriculture (USDA) here.
Sikandar Bosan said the Government was working closely with agricultural scientists, international partners and farmers to propagate agriculture-research and bring innovations at the doorstep of farmers across the country.
This will not only improve the livelihood of vulnerable poor population but will be a step towards securing food security in the country, he added.
He said today, Pakistan is the 8th largest food producing country and 5th largest producer of milk.
However, Pakistan like other developing countries facing challenges in expanding its agricultural outputs to ensure future food availability for the rapidly increasing population. He said using this platform, work together to ensure balanced use of fertilizer and expand the scope of this initiative to Khyber Pukhtunkhwa, Balochistan, AJ&K, Gilgit-Baltistan and FATA. He said the excessive use of fertilizers has created unfavourable balance of nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in the soils. This imbalance in nutrients, he said has emerged as a major contributor in the decline and degradation of crop production and soil fertility in the country. Talking on the occasion, FAO representative to Pakistan Patrick T Evans shared that FAO was working on a baseline atlas of current soil fertility practices, desegregated by farm size and cropping systems in Pakistan.
No comments:
Post a Comment