ISSUES

Absence of suitable farm marketing legislation
Siraj-ul-Hasan 

Marketing legislation provides a framework to enable the farmers to sell their produce under certain rules and regulations, both individually and collectively. But in its wider sense it brings the various marketing aspects right from the market preparation of the produce till it reaches the consumer's hands under a discipline.

Regulating Agricultural Markets 
Siraj-ul-Hasan 

The institution of agricultural markets, though in existence since long in Pakistan, to facilitate the sale-purchase of agricultural commodities is still beset with a number of drawbacks.

AoA negotiations and members' positions
Roshan Malik 

Economic indicators show that our economy is based on agriculture production, and this sector is central to our food security and rural employment. The promotion of trade liberalisation as structured in Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is a great challenge for developing countries like Pakistan.

WTO: need for a proactive Southern Agenda
Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri in Geneva 

The lack of agreement on common goals for trade liberalisation has resulted in a deadlock. To move forward, one needs to be free from all biases--for or against--to explore the options and look into the issues, which have emerged with the new trading regime.

Rough weather for animal feed industry
Siraj-ul-Hasan 

If we look retrospectively at the development of animal feed industry in the country, it is revealed that this industry, so vital for the growth of livestock sub-sector of agriculture is still in a bad shape.

Africa spice islanders battle market collapse
Wangui Kanina

It is harvest time in Pemba. The clove trees are laden with buds ripe for picking and in the villages the potholed roads are lined with spices spread out to dry.

Zimbabwe economic crisis hits Mugabe's land reforms
Cris Chinaka

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has faced down both international criticism and local protest to push through his controversial land reforms, seizing white-owned farms and handing them to black farmers.

Palestinian farmers lose land to Israeli destruction
Mark Heinrich

Sitting in a dirt road and weeping silently in abject defeat, Zuheir Abdel-Hadi watched his olive trees fall one by one to a chainsaw-wielding Israeli flanked by guards with machine guns.

Argentine farmers shun peso for a bag of beans
Damian Wroclavsky 

ARTICLE (November 29 2002) : In Argentina, where economic chaos has given birth to 11 different currencies issued by cash-hungry local governments, farmers have found a bushel of soyabeans is worth more than a bag of banknotes.

Crisis in sugar industry

The Sindh government is reported to be contemplating legal action against the sugar mills in the province, which are alleged to have deliberately delayed commencement of sugarcane crushing in the current season.

UN help in poverty reduction

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) announced the other day their association with the ongoing poverty reduction efforts in Pakistan, which is indeed a reassuring circumstance.

WTO and the challenges facing agriculture
Irfan Shahzad

It was fair on Federal Commerce Minister Abdul Razzaq Dawood's part to accept the government failure on different accounts, and specifically on the Pakistani efforts to prepare for the post-WTO scenario.

Agricultural marketing policy necessary
Siraj-ul-Hasan

The agricultural marketing system in Pakistan has developed from an age-old traditional method to that characterised with a certain degree of scientific approach. Although this change has given appreciable dividends to the big farmers yet the small ones being pretty vulnerable at the marketing stage, have been least benefited.

Pathetic agriculture performance
A. K. Sial

The economic managers are well justified to blazon certain successes on economic front, including strong currency, record high level of foreign exchange reserves and rebirth of stock exchange bulls. But these achievements could neither impress nor satisfy common man, so far, since he is yet to see any positive impact of these policies on his life.

REVIEW: Save the birds

The internationally acclaimed wildlife artist and naturalist Robert Bateman's Birds is a lavishly illustrated and informatively written account based on a personal birding odyssey and a life time commitment to conservation. At a lecture and book launch arranged by the Elsa Wild Animal Appeal in Mississauga, Ontario in October 2002, Robert Bateman stressed that "we should be taking the defensive stand" for birds.

Harmful Substances in Plastics

Dr. Sheftel received his M.D. degree at the Kiyv Medical Institute, Ukraine. By 1966 he made a doctorate (PhD in hygiene) and after this he was a senior researcher and a team manager at the All-Union Research Institute of Hygiene and Toxicology of Pesticides, Polymers and Plastic Materials (Kiyv, USSR). There he engaged in development of the modern toxicology of plastics and was a leading scientist in this field in Russia.

Restructuring Tarbela 

Should Tarbela be with Wapda? The answer is no. Tarbela was constructed as part of the Indus Basin Treaty to provide storage of 9.4 MAF. Tarbela makes a major contribution to the national economy. 

Pakistan's Poultry Industry Badly Hit

In March 1997, the Government of Pakistan issued an ordinance called the Marriages (Prohibition of Wasteful Expenses) Ordinance, 1997, prohibiting for two years all "wasteful expenses on marriages and other related ceremonies".

Milk supplies: rational approach needed

Is it not sad that a country like Pakistan, having adequate milk resources, has been importing substantial volumes of powdered milk spending a lot of valuable foreign exchange? Even, during FY 01, milk and cream valued at dollar 10.8 million were imported.

Food crisis likely to hit southern Africa

Drought is always a fear for southern Africans, but this year farmers are keeping a close eye on a brewing El Nino weather pattern that looks likely to exacerbate regional food supply problems.

Genetically engineered food

Genetic engineering of food is an inherently risky process. Current understanding of genetics is extremely limited and scientists do not know the long-term effects of releasing these unpredictable foods into our environment and our diets. Yet, GE ingredients are freely entering our food without adequate safeguards in place and without explicit consumer consent and knowledge.

Environmental impacts of genetic engineering

The introduction of genetically engineered organisms into complex ecosystems is a global experiment with unpredictable and irreversible consequences. Genetic pollution may be passed on to all future generations of life.

Sugar industry in financial crisis
M.A Siddiqui

The sugar industry of Pakistan is facing financial crisis for the last three years and especially units located in the province of Sindh are under great financial burden.

Not enough fish in the sea, study finds

The world's growing population and over fishing will mean around one billion people in developing countries will face shortages of fish, their most important source of protein, within 20 years.

Hepatitis C- an appalling human disease
By Dr. Masood Akhtar

Liver is a vital organ of human body having different functions. It stores iron reserves, as well as vitamins and minerals; makes bile to help digest food; detoxify poisonous chemicals, including alcohol, beer, wine, and drugs; converts food we eat into stored energy and chemicals necessary for life and growth; makes blood and clotting factors to help blood clots; manufactures new proteins; remove poisons from the air, exhaust, smoke and chemicals we breathe; manufactures and export's important body chemicals used by the body.

Rising trend of farm prices: causes and remedies
Siraj-ul-Hasan 

A study of farm prices reveals that wholesale prices of most of the products followed an upward trend during the last five years as is evident from the Index Number of three Commodity groups (base year 1990-91)

A bleak scenario
Roshan Malik

Trade liberalisation is much more on the agenda of the North than reducing hunger from the globe. All their efforts are focused on extracting as much as they can from multilateral agreements and leave the poor nations more vulnerable.

Hunger widens with increased production
Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri

If 'surplus' wheat stocks are rotting in the reservoirs of various provincial and federal agencies in Pakistan, then why millions of people are suffering from malnutrition and living below the poverty line?

Canola needs to enhance its production
Muhammad Tahir

Pakistan is facing a severe deficit of edible oil and spending a huge amount of foreign exchange for its import. The national requirement is increasing every year due to the rapid growth of population and enhanced per capita demand. The local production of edible oil has not increased at the required rate. Infact, the area under oilseeds is decreasing and increased production is coming from the increased per acre yields of the oilseed crops.

Water: a major potential trigger for war

The world's growing thirst for water is becoming a major potential trigger for war, and global warming is set to accentuate that risk, experts say. Ecologists have warned for years of a looming 'water crunch,' when in hot, dry regions, the demands of a surging population could exceed the supply from lakes, rivers and aquifers reeling from pollution or drained by decades of overuse.

Water shortages and artificial glacier melting
Aamir Kabir

The idea of melting glacier in the northern peaks artificially in a bid to help improve the water situation in the country has recently been discussed among food and agriculture ministry which is in a fix over severe damage, wreaked by years of drought, to major crops.

Kalabagh dam: benefits outweigh the costs
Prof Syed Ali Rizwan

While the technical issues and concerns raised by the upper and lower reparians have been resolved, the socio-political factors remain unsolved to date, and are being exploited by those having vested interests.

Little words, very little actions
Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri

WSSD was hijacked by free trade talks, a backward-looking, insular and ignorant US administration and its friends in Japan, Canada, Australia and OPEC, a confused EU, and the global corporations.

Balochistan drought: quick official action awaited
Sikander Brohi

Balochistan, the largest province, covers about 44 per cent land of Pakistan. It is characterized as arid and semi-arid with a wide range of inter-related desert ecosystems that vary from one another , mainly as a function of precipitation, temperature, and altitude.

Sustainable Resource Management - A Community Issue
Dr. Rashid Qaisrani

It is becoming more and more apparent that the conditions of natural resources in Pakistan is in decline, through the impact of human use of land and water. For examples of obvious impacts, we need look no further than water-logging and salinity in irrigated land, poor water quality, loss of wetlands and disappearing of vegetation in the Barani areas where it is mostly needed, over extraction of groundwater (aquifer being dried up in Balochistan), over grazing, no training and lack of information to the community. The community should be kept well informed of the planning, they should rather be encouraged to participate in the planning phase which at the moment is against the agenda of bureaucratic planning approach.

Fallacy in current agriculture growth?
Dr. Zafar Altaf

The Finance Minister's bugling notwithstanding, Azizjan economist of the Finance Ministry (previous Darian, from Dar) in tow also notwithstanding
there should have been a disclaimer by them saying that if the arithmetic
does not work out and if the sums are not right we are not to be blamed
because we gave up simplicity for complexity.

Poverty alleviation: the recipe and dilemma
M. Sharif

On 26 August, the Asian Development Bank's (ADB) Country Director in Pakistan unveiled a $2.4 billion aid programme for Pakistan for the next three years, from 2003 to 2005. The programme is part of CSP (Country Strategy Programme). It is already in vogue and spread over from 2002 to 2006. ADB's programme envisages annual disbursement of $800 million over the next three years. The loan is primarily meant to address the most persistent problem of poverty alleviation in the country.

Water woes around the world
Kaleem Omar

Former South African president Nelson Mandela took the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the so-called 'Earth Summit II,' by the scruff of the neck on Wednesday, urging politicians to make access to clean water a basic human right and to put water and sanitation much higher up the political, economic and social agenda.

Managing the continual water shortages
Aamir Kabir

In the backdrop of persistent water shortages in the country, the more efficient use of water in our agriculture has become a core requirement, as over 70 per cent of the national food production is produced under irrigation. The dangerous water situation, developing since mid 1990s, has been proving ruinous for the agricultural economy of the country.

Making the pharmaceutical industry self-reliant
Dr. Khalid Jawed Chaudhry

Soon after the inception of Pakistan, the nation found himself striving hard to meet the basic health care requirements because of non-existing pharmaceutical manufacturing sector.

Getting ready for WTO
Vishal Gupta
(Editor Poultry Times of India)

The efficiency and openness of our poultry disease diagnostic efforts may be hurting our ability to retain some of our export markets. It appears that some of the importers of our poultry products may be taking advantage of our candor when we report diseases that are not required to be reported. We have even lost markets because a laboratory isolated a low path avian influenza virus from a backyard or live bird market related flock. Some of our states have imposed restrictions and testing requirements on the movement of live poultry through their state because of an isolated occurrence of a low path avian influenza somewhere in the source state. The movements of breeder chicks and poults destined to
international airports have been severely impacted by such actions.

What can Johannesburg do?
Abid Qaiyum Suleri

Jo'burg must reorient global discussions back towards sustainable development, with clear investments in participatory action, a commitment to social justice, and a priority for the concerns of the most marginalised.

View from the South
Sajid Kazmi

The developing countries are feeling a negotiation fatigue, because too many items have been brought into the ambit of Sustainable Development.

From Rio to Johannesburg: Pakistan's response to ...
Shafqat Munir

We have learned that any plan for sustainable development needs to ensure improving resource efficiency.

Independence Day Supplement: A glimpse of the agri scene
Siraj-ul-Hassan

August 14, Despite taking appreciable strides in other sectors of economic activities, Pakistan is still a predominantly agricultural country.

Incentive package for corporate farming
Faraz Hashmi

April 27, Corporate agri-farming has been granted status of an industry by the government under a new package of incentives. The package opens a window for foreign investment in agriculture sector of the country.

Trade policy: under the shadow of uncertainty
M. Sharif

22nd July, the commerce minister declared the trade policy for the current fiscal year, a bit belatedly. Whereas the reaction of the business community was mixed, some of the promises, concessions, initiatives proposed in the policy admissions made up for not delivering the results on promises made last year, a statement of facts made by the minister, that our exports have increased from $7.78 billion in 1999 to $10.4 billion in 2003, is a considerable improvement.

Evolutionary trends in marketing: WTO Scenario
Abdul Saboor
Lecturer Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Agriculture.

Marketing is not a static phenomenon. Rather, it is dynamic in its ever-changing trends. The pace and momentum of its functioning is very slippery particularly under World Trade Organization (WTO) scenario. It often changes dramatically; sometimes slowly and frequently in ways that are difficult to predict. Those business entities in Pakistan, which are able to detect and predict such changes, would certainly be in a better position to prosper and nurture in the international markets as compared to the laggard ones. There is a lot of space and scope for the firms to share the market profit of the world but if they use marketing as a technique for success. Why are some firms so successful while other fail? Increasingly it is because the winners realize the power and potential of marketing. Let us explore just how marketing is evolving in the geo-economic culture of WTO.

Save the Dairy sector-Save Rs. 1043 Billion per anum
M.Subhan Qureshi, PhD
Utilization of science as a tool for development of economies of nations, has divided the world into two components, the developing and the developed world. The formers have ignored their natural resources while the laters have exploited them upto maximum capacity.

Need for comprehensive wheat storage and export policy
Pakistan harvested a record wheat crop of about 22 million tonnes, last year, which far exceed its domestic requirements. This enabled it to dispense with the import of wheat altogether. On the contrary, it has an appreciable exportable surplus.

Agri-commodity pricing: putting an end to anomaly
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) world food summit that began in Rome on June 10 was greeted by large placard-wielding crowds jeering delegates from the rich OECD countries.

Agriculture needs impetus
In the current external and domestic environment, the revival of country's economy has become a difficult task. There appears no option other than developing the agricultural sector.

Corporate farming or corporate greed?
The remedy our government is proposing--under the trade liberalisation regime--is to hand over our food production to TNCs. In other words, if our farmers cannot afford to eat bread, why don't they eat cakes?

World food summit 2002, 5 years later: what needs to be done
By Dr Abid Qaiyum Suleri
The UN's aim for halving the number of starving and malnourished by 2015 would never be achieved unless current policy of promoting industrialised agriculture is not reoriented

AOA to hit poor farmers
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is only international body dealing with the rules of trade between nations. The WTO is home to a series of agreements, out of which Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is of great importance for developing countries with respect to their economies and food security.

Water scarcity pushes agriculture sector into trouble
The economic survey said that irrigation water scarcity pushed agriculture sector into difficult area during 2001-2002, with overall negative impact on economy.

• Role of food marketing agencies
• Corporate farming vs land reforms
• Can India abrogate Indus Water Treaty?
• Wheat Problems Faced By the Farmers & Next Strategies  2002  
• Strategy for National Agricultural Development horizon 2010
• Agricultural Sector in Pakistan
• Contingency plan needed for Kharif rice crop
• Problems of urban food security
• Land Disposal Ordinance: a sign of hope
• World wheat situation and outlook
• Facts about Thal flood water canal
• 'Water water no where'
• Provinces reject new water formula
• Thal Canal will draw water from Punjab's share'
• Thal canal project okayed  
 

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