By Asad Cheema
ISLAMABAD: The wheat sowing campaign across the country was in full swing as the grain sowing has been completed in over 50.85 percent of areas against the set targets for the current season (2022-23).
So far the wheat cultivation completed over 11.62 million acres of land across the grain-producing areas in the country as the sowing targets of the crop Rabi 2022-23 was fixed at 22.86 million acres in order to fulfil the domestic requirements as well as for exporting, said Food Security Commissioner in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, Imtiaz Ali Gopang.
He said that crop sowing in Punjab was completed in over 56.06 percent of areas and wheat cultivated over 9.24 million acres, adding that crop sowing in rain-fed areas of all four provinces witnessed encouraging trends due to timely rains and incentives introduced by the government to revive the agriculture sector in the country.
Meanwhile, wheat sowing in Sindh Province was completed by 36.20 percent as it brought about 1.01 million acres under grains cultivation, he said adding that wheat cultivation targets for the province was fixed at 2.79 million acres for the period under review.
Meanwhile, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa cultivated wheat over 1.37 million acres of land as compared to its assigned targets of 2.22 million acres, he said adding that the province has completed the sowing of over 61.71 percent areas.
However, the crop sowing data from the Province of Balochistan was awaited and the government was making all-out efforts to develop the agriculture sector of the province, particularly in flood-hit districts in order to avert the challenges created due to catastrophic flash floods and rains, he added.
Imtiaz Ali further said that Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) had fixed wheat output targets at 28.4 million tons by cultivating the crop over 9.3 million hectares during crop season 2022-23 in order to fulfill local requirements as well as to keeping the strategic reserves for the country.
Ministry of National Food Security and Research in collaboration with provincial governments also provide over 3.183 million bags of certified wheat seeds to the farmers of floods affected areas to ensure maximum sowing of major cash crop of the season to revive agriculture and avert the impact of catastrophe in the country, he added.
In this regard a digital application has been developed to deliver and distribute seeds among the flood-hit farmers in a transparent and efficient manner, he said adding that each seed bag would comprise 50 kg of different approved verities while the cost of the scheme amounts to Rs17.16 billion and it would cover about 78 percent areas affected due to floods and torrential rains during current moon soon season.
It is worth mentioning here that Prime Minister had announced a special package worth Rs 1,800 billion to promote and develop the agriculture sector and provide farmers, particularly in the flood-hit areas free seeds, and inexpensive loans and to bring down prices of fertilizers and electricity.
