Sustainable Agriculture In Pakistan Case Study

Sustainable Agricultural Intensification in Pakistan: Challenges and Opportunities

Or

The challenges and Prospects: Striving towards Sustainable Agricultural Intensification in Pakistan

The agriculture of Pakistan constitutes the largest sector of the economy. It accounts for 24% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and it employs around 48.5% of the labor force (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics 2017). About 61.24% population lives in rural areas (World Bank 2016) where directly or indirectly their livelihood depends upon agriculture sector. The agriculture sector is responsible for ensuring food availability to the fast growing population but struggles to attain food security. Unfortunately, the agriculture sector faces many threats and challenges

That’s why sustainable agriculture intensification practices are necessary to meet current and future societal needs, employment opportunities, export earnings, economy development and food security. Agriculture Intensification is defined as, “increase in agriculture production per unit of inputs (which maybe labour, land, time, fertilizer, seed, feed or cash) (FAO 2004) and “Yields are increases without adverse environmental impact and without the cultivation of more land (The Royal Society 2009)”. Therefore, it aims to increase agriculture output from the same available land area, while reducing the negative environmental impacts of agricultural technology. For the sustainability, there is dire need to shift the agriculture production system to sustainable agriculture intensification. Literature shows that intensification of agriculture has significant effect on farmers’ livelihoods and environment. In this way intensive production will increase crop yield, better management practices of cultivated land, increase in farm incomes and economy

Unfortunately, in Pakistan farmers are poor and they have low level of incomes. Agriculture credit facilities are not common and easily available. Inadequate loan, high interest rate and untimely availability impact adversely crop productivity. That’s why poor farmers borrow from landlords and middlemen in Pakistan. It has been estimated that 50.8% farmers borrow from landlords at high interest rate (Khan 2012). In Pakistan, small farmers having 2 ha of land generally do not get credit facilities therefore they are unable to use the quality inputs. In this way, they get low crop yields. Limited availability of financing credits results in low agriculture productivity (Planning Commission