Sindh’s areas of Thatta, Badin, Sujawal and Umerkot have witnessed considerable cultivation of the crop. Photo courtesy www.fao.org/File
HYDERABAD: A progressive farmer, Nadeem Shah, has given up cultivating sunflower crop on his land in Sujawal, one of Sindh’s coastal districts that suit its cultivation climatically. He looks disappointed with this otherwise short-duration crop for a variety of reasons.
His disappointment seems understandable considering the fact that a farmer tends to invest in a crop to earn income and invest the same in next crop. And income-wise sunflower one of the major sources of edible oil production is no longer beneficial for him. It is all about his business preferences.
Pak farmers to protest against Imran Khan government over high inflation ANI | Updated: Feb 26, 2021 23:32 IST
Islamabad [Pakistan], February 26 (ANI): Farmers in Pakistan are set to stage a protest in March against the Imran Khan government over high inflation and other issues, according to a media report.
The Diplomat reported that multiple Pakistani farmer leaders, under the leadership of the organisation Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (literally meaning Pakistan Farmers Unity) met on February 21 to work out a roadmap to launch a protest in March. The Pakistani farmers are set to rally with a list of demands, including the fixing of the minimum support price (MSP) per maund (40 kilograms) of wheat at 2,000 Pakistani rupees and sugarcane at 300 rupees, in addition to setting a flat electric power rate of 5 rupees per unit for farm tube-wells.
Whatever it takes
February 23, 2021
Recent agriculture data is concerning enough to send chills up one s spine. The food import bill is up a massive 52 percent for July 2020 to January 2021, compared to the same period last year. It presents a formidable amount of $4.64 billion in just seven months.
Spending on import of cotton has increased by a whopping 266 percent to $0.7 billion in the same period. On the other hand, export earnings of basmati rice have fallen by more than 31 percent to just $0.3 billion.
On the domestic front, the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) has risen in the range of 0.32 percent to 0.81 percent, week on week, for the last five weeks in a row to February 18, 2021. On a yearly basis, the SPI has increased by 9.92 percent. The SPI is a reasonably good measure of the change in the cost of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by a household.
Pakistan faces a bleak future with rising food insecurity laosnews.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from laosnews.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Islamabad [Pakistan], February 10 (ANI): Pakistan s future seems vulnerable as it grapples with lower-than-expected levels of food output and is in urgent need to import key food items including edible oil, wheat, sugar, tea and pulses.
In an article in The News International, Dr Khaqan Hassan Naqeeb and Dr Yusuf Zafar write that the production of the highly-valued cotton crop has dipped to a level of a 30-year low and the productivity of the five staple crops has slipped to less than half of the world s best. Moreover, recent supply shocks have increased food prices by an average of 31 per cent in the past 29 months.