January 11, 2012

Pakistan's Punjab almost hits 100% wheat sowing targets

The Punjab Province of Pakistan has reached 96.33% of wheat sowing targets for 2011-12's crop season.

An official in the Directorate of Agriculture Punjab said that in the province, wheat showing process has been completed over 16.27 million acre of land as against the fixed targets of 16.89 million for the season 2011-12.

"The sowing was decreased by 1.59% as against last year sowing as about wheat was cultivated over 16.53 million acre during last sowing season", he added.

However, he said that crop sowing in rain-fed areas was increased by 3.43% during the period under review as the cultivation over irrigated area was reduced due to late cotton picking.

Meanwhile, Chairman Agri-Forum Pakistan, Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal told that overall wheat sowing was decreased by 1.3% during current crop season owing to different factors like artificial shortage of fertilisers (urea, DAP) and certified seeds of the crop.

Due to artificial shortage and black marketing of the major agri-inputs in the country the consumption of DAP was reduced by 40- 45% while consumption of urea was reduced by 23%, he observed.

He said wheat crop was set to cultivate over 22.7 million acre across the country to produce 25 million tonnes to fulfil the domestic consumptions as well as to export.

In Punjab, he said wheat was cultivated over 16 million acres as against the set target of 16.95 million acre to produce 19.2 million tonnes, in Sindh 2.5 million acres against the fixed targets of 2.7 million acres to get out-put of 3.2 million tonnes.

In Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa wheat was cultivated over 600,000 acres and 1.78 million acres as against the set targets of 0.8 and 1.5 million acres respectively, he added.

Ibrahim Mughal said that in Balochistan and KP the crop output was fixed at 0.8 million and sown over 1.5 million tonnes for the period under review.