Pakistan to revisit its policy on food security

By APD Writer Muhammad Sohail

ISLAMABAD, Sept. 6 (APD) - Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi has directed the authorities to revisit the country’s policy to ensure food security amid the issue of rising population, a statement from the PM Office said Wednesday.

According to the statement, Abbasi chaired a high-level meeting regarding the overall outlook of agriculture sector, achievements of the ministry and challenges faced by the agriculture sector, and ordered the Ministry of National Food Security and Research to work on a policy framework for putting in place optimal methods for ensuring food security in Pakistan, a country with a population of over 210 million people.

Presently the agriculture sector is contributing 19.5 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while around 42 percent of the total labor force is employed in the sector.

Agriculture provides 57.5 percent share in Pakistan’s total exports and growth rate of the sector remained 3.46 percent in the last fiscal year, much lower than the expectation.

The Prime Minister stated that the government’s aim is the sustainable growth of the agriculture sector as it is the mainstay of the national economy. He also expressed his concerns over the current low investment in the sector and ordered the ministry to take solid steps to ensure allocation of greater resources to the sector.

The meeting also agreed that as a bottom line, the state must ensure a fair return to farmers for their efforts by adopting sustainable policy framework and that the small farmers should be the focus of agriculture policy so as to provide maximum facilitation.

“Proposals to increase productivity and crop diversification, keeping in view the local demands and meeting various other challenges including climate change, should also be part of the framework along with the promotion of research and development functions of various organizations of the ministry in line with international best practices,” said the prime minister.

Basing its arguments on various projections of climate change impacts on the country’s agriculture and water resources, Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change has already said that the steadily rising temperatures pose a serious risk to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve sustainable food security and meet the food consumption needs of its fast increasing population.

“Global warming induced by rising temperatures can badly affect Pakistan’s food production system in the shape of crop yield losses and reduced growing cycles in various climatic zones of the country,” said the climate change ministry.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)