Pakistan has witnessed record wheat production during the fiscal year 2020-21, produced more than the estimated figures according to the government.
A meeting of the wheat review committee at the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, headed by the Federal Minister Syed Fakhar Imam was held at Pak-China Friendship Centre, Islamabad. The figures of the wheat production were presented in the meeting which shows that during the fiscal year 2020-21.
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Pakistan produced 27.539 million tons of wheat against the targeted production of 27.33 million tons. The meeting was attended by provincial agriculture secretaries, representatives of the provincial food departments, Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO)’s Managing Director, and senior officers of the ministry.
Fakhar Imam told the meeting that the production of wheat this year is about 2 million tons more than the production of last year. He said that higher crop production was due to the maintenance of a track and trace system for the certified seeds and improved weather conditions.
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The wheat production of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has been recorded at 1.459 million tons. Panjab is the province that gave the highest production of wheat which comes to 20.9 million tons. This is more than the estimated production of the province which was 20 million tons.
The meeting was held before the cultivation of the wheat crop to plan for the efficient production of the same during the next year.
The Minister added that there has been a record production of maize which is 8.4 million tons and the production of sugarcane came at the second position. The minister confessed that the production of cotton came down. However, the new production target of cotton has been fixed at 10.5 million bales. He added that at the international market, the prices of cotton are very high.
The bureaucracy created problems due to which the financial benefits from the federal government did not reach the farmers. He said that the federal government gave Rs.6 billion to provinces on accounts support for crops this year. He said the target of procuring the wheat at the official level has been fixed at 6.3 million tons out of which, 5.4 million tons have been procured.
