ARTICLE (March 14 2009): I have now seen most of the happenings in agriculture and I found that with the passage of time, we have deteriorated in our concepts and its application in the country. How is this explained? Very simply, the inflationary aspect did not keep in touch with the salary structure. The other aspect that came to the front was the connectivity required for the job.
Cronyism and caste system and other forms of ethnic considerations came to the fore. This had an adverse affect on the organisational force and at the moment no less than 79% of the foreign-trained personnel have left the research organisations for one reason or the other. Agricultural inflation, or agflation, as it is now called, has played havoc to the social system in the country.
The original sin is on the increase and the concept of social justice just does not appear to be corrected. Policies devised for a few as against the many have been put in place. How can exorbitant input costs in agricultural be reduced?
With nitrogen not available except in the black-market, there is no substitute for phosphate fertiliser and the effort not to find any is going on to apathy. What we then to do and say, as the West wants us to and take our comparative advantage to the pits of the world?
Pakistan will never be able to compete with the world, as we know it for the simple reason that the West will go on telling us how to raise tariffs on utilities till such time as our industries are unable to compete the globalised world that is becoming more and more poachers of what they had earlier preached.
The Bank of England is going to print money and increase its money supply and that is the answer to their highly paid CEOs in the corporate sector that take millions of dollars/or pounds as their salary. Well, that is the mean and rapacious end of the market and the mighty hidden hand of Adam Smith should come down heavily on them and these individuals taken to the logical place where they belong.
The western model of development and management has broken down because the governance there is not of the order that is required to have the kind of responsible social and corporate behaviour that is and was expected of them. A decadent society is indicated where the norms of decency are openly flouted and breakdown of taboos accepted as a way of life and one of normal behaviour.
On the social side, the indicator comes from the advertisements in the leading papers suggesting that temporary common law husband and wife relationship for these elites that have all the money and now want it to be used for destroying all those values and attitudes that their leaders speak off but never practice. What values do you allow when taboo behaviour becomes acceptable and when nuclear families breakdown due to heavy considerations of money? Money availability is for means to a decent end and that is all.
USAs in God we Trust has come to an end. Can social values be resurrected? It is not possible under the normal circumstances as the whip hand is no longer with the governments but with those who have enjoyed the benefit of these lapses of values and judgements at will in both time and space. Under conditions of uncertainty and that caused by the lack of decent management skills and the fetish about technological superiority there has to be some kind of give.
One never thought that it would be this kind of give in which the determinism of the globalised world would give way to the kind of economic debacle of the west? Is that the only model of development of a country and its society? Agricultural inputs can be reduced without jeopardising the food security of the country.
For Pakistan, the answer lies in the use of phosphate from the waste material of coal deposits in Pakistan, use of waste sugarcane sludge, use of leaf material from banana plants that have been discarded during pruning and that are lying waste by the road side. The advantages can be further driven home if all the manure from the animals including poultry is bagged and sold in granulated form. It is possible to do so and at a pittance of the original cost.
It has been done in the case of sugarcane waste and it can be done where the bulk of such material is available and let me take Landhi Cattle Colony as an example. You want sustainable agriculture that is what you have to do. Try something new our forefathers used and are not new technology but old ones packaged differently.
The cost of organic fertiliser that has been used in the research trials comes to about Rs 400 per bag and contains both nitrogen and phosphate and besides potash and the micro-nutrients. The game is an exciting one for in agriculture and life style nothing is wasted. The problem is with the collection process but that may be due to our inability to manage waste. Now we have CDA and the lot of commissioned people, who will go for obsolete waste managed technology just because they do not apply their mind.
That kind of cost will be never helpful for they are given to a living of ease and comfort. The waste recycling projects demand where it is done by a soil scientist of some repute is only 1,2 million rupees whereas if CDA is taken into consideration and some others then the cost would be in dollars and millions of it. These are innocent wonders of this world. For agriculture one can take the coal, refine it and get two acids that are used for such good affect that one wonders at the lack of our ability to cash in on it.
Humic acid costs Rs 50 per liter and is sued as a plant hormone and one has to use two kilograms of it per acre and the other is fulvic acid that is used for the clearing of sludge and metal impurities in city and town. Time to change the input strategy? You bet. At what cost? None? Instead of paying the MNCS the kind of money that one is paying and instead of touts of the WB and ADB [former employees] sending obscene signals in favour of more of the earlier systems why not trust our very own.
All kinds of fears are thrown at you and all kinds of harassment are carried out while posing as friends of Pakistan. Once the input strategy is worked out the output strategy would have to be taken into consideration. The sustainability of agriculture would not be in question. The cost would be reduced and it would mean that everyone is a gainer. Is that bad for the system?
The other input cost that has never been under consideration is the transaction cost developed as a result of fossil fuels. It is obvious that there is no control over the system and that the petrol and oil policy is dictated by other nations. So what is wrong with having your own bio-fuel policy? Want to try Salicornia and other bio-fuels grown on lands that are marginal and not being used for any other agriculture or for any purpose.
But what you do at the ignorance of the people that are to give a decision and that are located in places where a planning permission has to be taken. Life is like that in Pakistan where policemen on the beat are taking decisions for the rest of the country through their limited visions of what is required.
Having had a comfortable life of their own they have done what they have to mess up this country for lack of thinking and acting. I wish I could unleash the thought process of Paulo Fararie on their limited minds and shake them up to be and to be in the process of conscientisation. There is more to life than a 9 am to 3 pm office life and more to it than to sit before the TV and call it relaxing.
Try something different for your country for it has given you a lot and taken you from your bootstraps and developed you as a worthy member of this country and now it is up to us to take it to a nationhood situation. Try it for at the end of it all of us will be satisfied that we have played the game well and maybe, just maybe, build that bridge that gives us hope and resilience. Take care for the powerful in the world of economics do not want to lose and will try and win at all costs.
