Center asks provinces to provide wheat sowing data to ensure achieving targets

Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Ministry of National Food Security and Research has circulated a letter to provincial governments asking them to provide wheat sowing data in order to make coordinated efforts to achieve maximum crop sowing during the season.
The provision of authentic data about sowing of major crop during Rabi Season would help in making appropriate policies and estimation about the crop and its output, besides ensuring the availability of inputs at federal and provincial levels, said Food Security Commissioner Dr Imtiaz Ahmad Gopang.
Talking to APP here on Friday he said that wheat sowing was started in Sindh and Punjab in pockets, adding that sowing of crop formally gained momentum by the second week of November all across the grain sowing areas in the country.
The wheat sowing in rain fed areas was expected to accelerated after receiving the first rain of winter season, he said adding that rains would be most beneficial for the growers of rain-fed areas and providing them required moisture for sowing the crop well in time.
Besides, it would also help in exploiting full potential of rain-fed areas where other crops including pulses, oil seeds and vegetables were also grown to fulfill the local needs, he added.
Timely rains would help to bring more areas under wheat cultivation that would also help supplementing the national output, which was reduced during last sowing season, he remarked.
He informed that Federal Committee on Agriculture had fixed wheat production targets at 26.78 million tons by cultivating crops over 9.16 million hectares.
Wheat sowing during current season was expected to enhance by 2 to 3 percent in irrigated areas in the country, adding that increase in the minimum support price and incentive package for Rabi crop had encouraged the farmers to grow more crop during the season.
Giving the available grain stocks over view, he said that about 4,317,265 tons of wheat was available for meeting the local consumptions, adding that out of total about 3,397,648 tons were released.
Dr Imtiaz further informed that about 214,593 tons of imported wheat also reached, where as carry forward stocks stood at 602,189 tons, adding that with the augmentation of local grain reserves prices of the commodity registered declining trend in local markets.