Agriculture, livestock contributing GDP growth

In Pakistan, the key objective of agriculture sector is to ensure proper production and availability of food for the citizens and also offers livelihoods to people directly involved in the sector along with the value adding chain.

The achievement of sustainable progress in agriculture sector (contributes over 22 percent to GDP) completes macroeconomic objectives by its forward and backward linkages with the other sectors. Pakistan agriculture and food security concerns remain high on the strategy agenda at national level. During FY14, the overall presentation of agriculture sector recorded a progress of 2.1 percent because of an optimistic progress in agriculture related sub sectors. Livestock rose at 2.9 percent, fishing 1.0 percent, crops 1.2 percent and forestry 1.5 percent. This sector’s crop sub-sector component which includes significant crops rose by 3.7 percent while other crops and cotton ginning explained a pessimistic progress of 3.5 percent and 1.3 percent, respectively. Significant crops valued for 25.6 percent of agricultural value added and has experienced a growth of 3.7 percent in FY14 as against growth of 1.2 percent during the corresponding same period previous year. Important crops like rice, maize, wheat, sugarcane and cotton account 5.4 percent to GDP. These crops performed good on the back of optimistic growth in production, these crops recorded rise in the production of rice by 22.8 percent, maize 7.3 percent, wheat 4.4 percent and sugarcane 4.3 percent, respectively, while fall in production of cotton by 2.0 percent has been recorded. The factors underpinning agriculture sector growth include well water availability, timely availability of agriculture credit and more fertilizer offtake paved the way for getting the growth, and the impact is vivid through the progress of significant crops. Other crops that contribute 11.6 percent value addition in agriculture recorded a fall of 3.5 percent during FY14 against optimistic growth of 6.1 percent during the corresponding period previous year that is because of fall in production of pulses, fruits and vegetables. The cotton ginning registered a fall of 1.3 percent in its growth against the pessimistic growth of 2.9 percent during FY13.

The livestock sector which contributes 55.9 percent in the agriculture showed a growth of 2.9 percent in FY14 based on Livestock Census 2006. The fishing sector explained a progress of 1.0 percent having a share of 2.0 percent in agriculture value addition as against previous year’s progress of 0.7 percent.
Forestry sector registered a progress of 1.5 percent during FY14 as against to growth of 1.0 percent previous year.

The country has 2 crop seasons like kharif and rabi. Kharif season starts from April-June and harvested during October-December. Cotton, maize, moong, rice, sugarcane, mash, bajra and jowar are kharif crops. Rabi season starts as on October-December and is harvested in April-May. Tabacco, gram, wheat, lentil (masoor), rapeseed, barley and mustard are rabi crops. The production of agriculture sector is also dependent upon timely availability of irrigation water. During FY14, the availability of water for kharif season 2013 remained 13.5 percent greater than kharif-2012 and 2.4 percent fewer than the usual supplies of 67.1 MAF. The water availability was predicted at 32.5 MAF for rabi season during FY14, which was 1.9 percent greater than previous year’s rabi crop but 10.7 percent fewer than the usual availability of 36.4 MAF. Pakistan’s growing population size needs agriculture progress compatible to meet requirements of food. The change in consumption outline with a change in per capita income level needs extra proteins having diet. The transition of this sector from traditional to new farming methods is based on sufficient availability of inputs such as balanced use of fertilizers, certified seeds, mechanization, agricultural credit and fresh opportunities of investment in agricultural research and development. The attainment of well productivity also needs efficient utilization of water resources while the static cropping outline requires grave concentration as well. The adverse impact of climatic change on productivity requires to be countered by mitigating and adaptation gauges based on diversifications and innovations through inculcating farming community to adopt modern methods. The way forward is to increase the yield of crops along with fisheries and livestock production, and improve the agro-based industrial value addition.

The improved road and transportation infrastructure in rural regions has facilitated the farmers to tap extra income from production cycle of livestock, crops and perishable commodities by improved supply chain. Presently, the government has a lower growth rate target of 3.3 percent for sector during FY15, after the sector failed to meet the targeted growth rate for FY14 by 1.5 percent.