Pakistan is an agricultural country. about 70% of Pakistan population lives in rural areas and abt 60% of total population is indirectly and 40% directly employeed by agriculture. It contribution to GDP is 26%. Our major crop seasons are Kharif and Rabi and major crops are Rice, Cotton, Wheat, Sugar Cane, Maize, Tobacco.
Pak agri meets demand of its population and provides raw material for Pak industry i,e textile, sugar. It props pakistan's export substantially as we earn foreign exchage by exporting textile products. Although, it is backbone of our country it is not attended with due importance. Therefore a range of hinderance keep it from producing to its maximum potentialt.

Problems agriculture faces

1. Feudalism, Concetration of land in afew hands
2. Water and logging
3. Outdated modes of cultivation
4. lack of technology
5. Energy-it has badly hurt agriculture in recent years
6. Infrastructure-access to urban areas
7. Credit Facility
8. Access to market
9. little gain for farmer
10. Knowledge
and others

Solution

1. Land reforms, distribution of land amongst farmer to enhance yield per acre and remove poverty. Reforms on the pattern of land reforms of 60s and 70s.
2. Import modern technology and machinery, make that available to farmers on sudsidised rates.
3. Develop infrastructure and roads linking urban areas and villages
4. Easy loan facility to farmers: zarai tarkayati and khushali bank and all schedule banks have facility but procedural twists and location of banks in cities deny farmers access to the facility.
5. growers must have access to domestic as well as international market. This will earn them huge gains and encrouge them to sow more.
6. Energy supply uninterupted
6. More gains to farmers and growers: recent years have witnessed migration from rural areas to urban areas. villagers look for employement in cities because activities in rural areas do not raise their living standard due to minimal gains and no saving. More gains to farmers/villagers will encourage them to stay in villages and engage in agricutlural activities.
7. Research and development: Modern methods and research more more porduction of crop
8. Investment in agri
9. Distibution of water: very important and very contraversial. Pak should update it cannal system and build resorviors to ensure water in dry times.
10. Insurance of crop by State: this will provide sense of security to growers.
and others.

Dear Emranali;

its a good contribution, but please try to remove grammatical mistakes and try to write complete words e.g. Pakistan instead of Pak and agriculture instead of agri...

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'Thee woh ik shakhs kay tasawar saay - abb woh ranayee khayal kahaan'

dear emran ali it is a good attempt. however pleaze correct some of the facts and figures. like, agricultural contribution to our GDP is not 26% rather it is 20.9%. and it employes 65% of the population.

the problems u have mentioned are true and pakistan faces these problems.

whether u have selected agriculture as optional?
i select it but have little know-how. please would u share with me any book regarding agriculture. i will give u suggestion that Yellow pages of Dawn newspaper in which a page comes on agriculture which discusses some important issues of agriculture.so read it must.

@ marilatif; agriculture used to be my subject. you have rightly stated that yellow pages of Dawn (monday edition) is very useful for agriculture.

You may get books, published by National Book Foundation, from any good library like Horticulture, Plant Breeding, Extension Technique etc. they are very useful.

In addition to this, i will recommend you to have a look at relevant portion optional subjects in our forum for getting more information of books of agriculture.

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'Thee woh ik shakhs kay tasawar saay - abb woh ranayee khayal kahaan'

Dear Awan,


Your suggestions and corrections are more than welcome. Actually, I ignored rules of writing while taking the forum as informal. But i was wrong. I shall care about grammatical and spelling mistakes henceforth. I shall look forward for more suggestions for improvement in my writing.


Dear Marilatif,

Your appreciation has raised my morale to attempt more at writing and contribute to the forum for the good of members and myself.
I have not opted for agriculture, however, i am intrested in economics therefore, I regularly go through Yellow Pages of Dawn and other sources for information.



Regards,

Hi Friends The topic under discussion is supereb and i want to involve myself..The figures which are given above thats a great job,well done and i think it demands more time and hardwork to collect all these facts and figures.Thats why thanks for information and i want to share my own point of view that agriculture is great blessing of God for pakistan and we are not taking proper advantage of it.We are sending our raw material of agriculture to the outer countreies and they are taking this in a very low price.Then they use technology and return that material in a very high price and we use our own things with the foreign brand names.But we are not realizing that after utilizing this technology we can earn many more and that will be in favour of our economy.I think this awarness should be aroused.Thanks. Hina

Agriculture_____ The Mainstay of Pakistan's Economy

When the rest of the world is sinking into the ocean of food shortage, how Pakistan can be an exception to this. Pakistan is no more an agriculture economy now. An urgent policy reform is needed to tackle the menace of high costs of production resulting into food fiascos galore in a pseudo agriculture economy.
Agriculture, being the mainstay of Pakistan's economy, is under great surveillance for last few years. That is not the case exclusively with ours, the sector is under threat all the world over owing to enviromental hazards, Malthusian hysteria of population growth, high energy costs including oil price surge, water issues including shortage, logging and salinity, unequeal distribution of lands and feudalism conundrum, technological backwardness, inter alia. Broadly speaking, major issues in the agriculture sector of Pakistan can be divided into three main categories: firstly, environment and energy ; secondly: Feudalism and absence of continual land reforms; and finally the production techniques that are still outmoded in the modern era of science and tecnology.

Though a great proportion of pakistani labour force has been employed by the agri sector yet Pakistan is no more an agriculture economy as is evident from the last few years issues of the Economic Survey of Pakistan , owing to the decreasing contribution of agriculture in GDP(Gross Domestic Production). Now the service Sector is prospering day by day. What it shows is the under utilisation of our land resources at the one hand and the realisation of potentials in the service sector at the other hand.

To meet the ever increasing demands for food owing to high population increase, it is devisable that an urgent policy package should be adopted by the government to boost the agriculture production by tackling the real problems of the peasnats' imbroglios galore including low wages, small lands, high production costs, low subsidies etc. Moreover, land reforms, building of more dams, saving environment, more energy provision, research and development are other core areas needing true attention of both the private as well as the public sector to meet the challenges of food shortage.

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stir is life!

As the discussion is related to agriculture, so i must quote something or the other. What I believe is that if all the efforts are put to develop agriculture sector purely on business lines while utilizing the modern techniques, Pakistan Economy will have a big big positive jump. We have huge fertile land, but is not fully utilized We have one of the best irrigation systems of the world but we have failed to manage it properly. We have farm labor available at lowest price We have full fledge Agriculture Department but policies and extension system is poor Marketing system is zero Income diversification is not encouraged Processing is not developed Farmer is not educated in modern ways No check over quality of inputs

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Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination.
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Muhammad Irfan Arshad