Wheat harvesting in April   
 
ISLAMABAD (APP) – Harveting of wheat will start from the first week of next month (April) all across the Punjab province, whereas it has already started in lower parts of Sindh.

Deputy Agriculture Development Commissioner (DADC) of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA), Imtiaz Ali told that due to timely rains and better weather conditions satisfactory wheat crop out look was reported with no complaints of insects attack or other diseases.
 

The harvesting will pick up momentum slowly in other wheat growing areas of the country because of moisture in the fields due to recent rain spell, he added. A target of 25 million tons of wheat production was fixed for the year 2010-11, as the crop was cultivated over 8.8 million hectare of land in the country, he added.

As much as 1.3 million tons of wheat would be procured during the wheat procurement campaign for the year 2010-11 to fulfil the domestic requirements as well as for keeping the strategic reserves in the country,” he added.

He said that the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) has already finalized arrangements for by setting up about 200 canters in Punjab to procure wheat. He said that these canters would be established in 10 zones of the Punjab including Hafazabad, Pakpatan, Vehari, Bawalnagar, Khaniwal, Lodhrran, Allipur, Khanpur and Khairpur districts.
 

Initially, the Corporation has arranged gunny bags for packing 800,000 tons of wheat while the sacks for packing remaining wheat would be purchased next month, he added.

He informed that the provincial government in line with the federal government has devised a strategy to provide 200 bags per farmer at an average of 10 bags per acre for small and medium growers. The big farmers having land of more than 50 acre would be provided 500 bags each adding that when these bags would be filled by the growers they would be provided more bags for the grain packing, he added.

The GM PASSCO said that the bags would be provided after the land certification of revenue department to ensure transparency adding that only those farmers would be entertained who provide the certificate of land. The wheat harvesting season would start by next month from Sindh Province, he added.

It may be recalled that this year wheat crop was sown over 8.8m hectare of land in the country to fulfill the domestic consumption which has fallen by 3.5 per cent as compared to the last year sowing. Wheat crop was sown over 6.68 million hectare of land in Punjab, while in the Sindh Province about 1.08 million hectare of land are under wheat crop, he said.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK) the wheat crop was sown over 0.73 million hectare and in Baluchistan it was cultivated over 0.32 million hectare.