Pakistan Agriculture Sector: A Major Source of Economic Growth by Engr. A. R. Daudpota; Italian Trade Commission (Pakistan Desk). Agricultural sector is indispensable to the country’s economic growth, food security, employment generation and poverty alleviation particularly, at the rural level. It contributes 19.2% to the GDP and provides employment to around 38.5% of the labor force. More than 6570% of the population depends on agriculture for its livelihood. Agricultural growth rate has been constrained by shrinking arable land, climate change, water shortages, and large-scale population and labor shift from rural to urban areas. Increasing agricultural productivity, therefore, requires adoption of new approaches. With strong forward and backward linkages with the secondary (industrial) and tertiary (services) sectors, it can play a pivotal role to spur economic growth. However, this sector has remained prone to several challenges like climate change, variance in temperature, water shortage, and changes in pattern of precipitation along with increase in input prices. The government is closely monitoring key crops and devising policies/planning interventions to ensure uninterrupted supply of basic food items at affordable 28
prices in the country. The primary goal of the government is to enhance financial inclusion in the agriculture sector to boost productivity and exports, thereby enabling a rural development-driven economic growth.
Rabi, being the second season, sowing begins from October to December and is harvested from April to May. It comprises mainly of wheat, gram, masoor(lentil), tobacco, rapeseed, barley and mustard.
Realizing the importance of agriculture, the government is also focusing on pro-agriculture set of policies to tap maximum benefits by introducing the agricinput regime to increase yields of major *RABI and *KHARIF. The Prime Minister has approved “Agriculture Transformation Plan” with the objective to enhance national agricultural output and livelihood of farmers.
The agriculture sector s performance during 2020-21 broadly stands encouraging as it grows by 2.77% against the target of 2.8%. The growth of important crops (wheat, rice, sugarcane, maize and cotton) during the year is 4.65%. The production of major Kharif crops 2020, such as sugarcane, maize and rice indicated considerable improvement compared to last year and surpassed the production targets.
Agriculture Performance during 2020-2021 Pakistan has two cropping seasons. “Kharif”, the first sowing season, which starts from April to June and is harvested from October to December. This season crop cycle mainly consists of rice, sugarcane, cotton, maize, moong (a small round green bean), mash (powdered malt), bajra (pearl millet or similar grain) and jowar (Sorghum vulgare, extensively cultivated in Asia and Africa).
The production of sugarcane increased by 22.0% to 81.009 million tonnes from 66.380 million tonnes, rice by 13.6% to 8.419 million tonnes from 7.414 million tonnes and maize by 7.4% to 8.465 million tonnes from 7.883 million tonnes. However, the cotton crop suffered mainly due to decline in area sown, heavy monsoon rains and pest attacks. The cotton production reduced by 22.8%, to 7.064 million bales from 9.148 million bales last year.
