Pakissan.com; Changing growth pattern in agri sector

Given vulnerability to natural vagaries, the crop sub-sector is gradually losing its share in agriculture. It declined from 65.1 percent in FY 91 to 57.3 percent in FY 01. As against this the livestock share rose to 37.7 percent from 29.8 percent during this period.

The sharp reversal posted by agriculture this year is mainly due to the negative growth of 10.5 percent in the production of major crops (usually accounting for about 40 percent in agriculture and around 10 percent in GDP). Among major crops, the output of food-grains viz. wheat, rice, bajra, jowar, maize barley collectively decreased by 8.5 percent to 26.0 million tonnes during FY 01, while that of sugarcane, cotton and mustard oil declined by 5.9 percent, 4.3 percent and 8.1 percent respectively.

Not only did the scarcity of water limit the farmers' ability to maintain the area under cultivation at last year's level, it also adversely impacted the per hector yield of their crops by 6.7 percent in wheat, 2.7 percent in cotton, 1.4 percent in rice and 1.1 percent in sugarcane.

Minor crops, with 17.0 percent share in agriculture and 4.2 percent share in GDP, posted positive growth of 1.1 percent during FY 01 against a decline of 9.1 percent last year.

Individually, the production of oil seeds declined by 3.4 percent while that of pulses increased by 6.2 percent. The other important minor crops viz. potato and onion underwent declines of 9.2 percent and 9.7 percent respectively.

However, there was a useful degree of reshuffling amongst the components, with fresh fruit emerging as the leading item with production of 6.0 million tonnes during FY 01 followed by vegetable with 4.6 million tonnes, condiments with 1.8 million tonnes, pulses with 237 thousand tonnes and oilseeds with 214 thousand tonnes.

Livestock, making around 37.7 percent of agriculture and 9.3 percent of GDP this year, doubled its growth rate to 4.8 percent compared to last year's with strong growth in poultry products (white meat and eggs). All other components of livestock, both in terms of population and. production, showed a positive growth as is evident from the following table.

As livestock is less vulnerable to adverse weather conditions than crops, it creates a stable alternative source of rural income and thus is able to diversify the farmers' risk portfolio.

The strong performance of minor crops and livestock suggests a robust growth potential, particularly for exports. Additionally, being less land intensive and comprising a diversified basket of output, these two sub-sectors have attracted sufficient interest in terms of corporate farming. Given the emergence of thriving specialised markets in the West and Japan for organically produced foods, this interest may be further cultivated by developing organic farming methods in Pakistan.

Fishing: Value added by fishing declined by 3.6 percent in FY01 against the positive growth of 9.7 percent last year. This includes all commercial and subsistence fishing compared to the positive growth of 13.7 percent in the export of fish, including fish preparations during FY00. a decline of 8.8 percent was registered this year. But the receipt in terms of value fell by only 0.8 percent mainly due to 8.7 percent increase in the unit value of exports.

Forestry: It covers logging and gathering of uncultivated fresh products. It registered an impressive growth of 40.4 percent during the year compared to an even higher growth of 113.0 percent during FY00. These growth rates have been possible on the basis of unsustainable deforestation.

Food availability: Despite shortfall in the production of food-grains, the availability of wheat, rice and pulses remained satisfactory during this year, mainly due to carryover stocks from FY00. This year's production of wheat (at 19.0 million tonnes), coupled with the carryover of more than two million tonnes from the last year kept the situation easy.

Sugar production received a setback mainly due to the crop being adversely affected on account of water shortage. However, the situation somewhat eased due to import of raw sugar which also helped boost the operations of the otherwise idle sugar mills. Market prices also fall by 22.7 percent by December-end 2000 compared to a month before.

All said and done, both the officials responsible to oversee agriculture as well as the tillers of the land should not feel complacent with the overall situation obtaining in the vital sector of agriculture. But they should be careful than ever before to ensure that pitfalls in the desired growth of agriculture should not be allowed to recur.

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Selected species    Million numbers          Products          Thousand tonnes

                FY 00               FY 01                  FY 00             FY 01

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Cattle          22.0                 22.4     Milk          25.6               26.3

Buffaloes       22.7                 23.3     Beef         985.0             1010.0

Sheep           24.1                 24.2     Mutton       649.0              666.0

Goats           47.4                 49.2     Poultry meat 322.0              333.0

Poultry        281.7                292.4     Eggs       8,463.0            8,677.0

(Million nos)

Source H/Food and Livestock

Courtesy Business Recorder

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