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KARACHI: Pakistan is in dire need of import of 400,000 tonnes of seed to start sowing wheat crop 2010-11 season and to avert wheat crisis in the country.
“Around 500,000 metric tonnes of seed has been washed away in flash flood in Punjab and Sindh”, member Sindh Agriculture Forum, Shakeel Ahmad said Friday.
He said wheat sowing season would start from October and there was an urgent need of import of seed from Latin America, USA and Africa.
Ahmad said the government should call for more international funds to save the upcoming wheat-planting season in Pakistan. He said the worst areas where flash floods washed away crops and wheat seed included Layyah, Jampur, Rahimyar Khan, Muzaffargarh and other parts in Punjab while areas in Sindh where wheat seed was washed away are Jacobabad, Shikarpur, Dadu, Larkana and parts of Thatta.
He said the growers could get yield of around 2.8 million tonnes of wheat out of the 400,000 imported wheat seed.
The government should take measures on war footing to import wheat seed in maximum time period otherwise the country would face a severe wheat crisis in 2011. He said November to March are important months as these are sowing and harvesting period of wheat sowing and harvesting in the country.
He said, in the flood-affected areas people are using wheat seed stocks that have not been affected by the flooding to feed their families and the displaced people they are sheltering.
The farmers faced worst type of calamity when they started preparing their land for planting when the floods began.
Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) last built wheat storage facility in 1984 in Rahimyar Khan, which has a capacity of storing 50,000 tonnes of wheat.
Pakistan has the least yield record of wheat per care in the world as 23 tonnes per acre whereas Germany has 65 tonnes per acre, France 62 tonnes per acre, USA 30 tonnes per acre, Englad 77 tonne per acre, Egypt 61 tonnes per acre, Denmark 78 tonnes per acre, Netherlands 91 tonnes per acre, Japan 40 tonnes per acre, New Zealand 74 tonnes per acre and India has a capacity of 26 tonnes per acre yield.
In many areas it would be possible to plant as soon as the water recedes and Ministry of Food and Agriculture should start funding and supplying seed to farmers, he maintained.
There are estimates that show that 3.6 million hectares of standing sugarcane, rice, maize, and cotton crops were destroyed in the recent floods.
Wheat prices in the world are around 45 percent down as compared to the prices in Pakistan. So the government instead of importing wheat should import wheat seed, he added.
Source: Daily Times
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