Some Suggestions For KPK Government Towards Economic Uplift Of The Province

[AhsanAmin]

I think it was very good that different provinces went to different political parties and most of us want to see healthy competition between PTI and PML. If both parties try to do great work to transform the economic condition of the people of their provinces and rest of the country, and if there is a desire to deliver better results in sincerely changing people's lives, the whole Pakistan will prosper. I was truly surprised by good and wise intentions behind some of the new projects that KPK government has started and I came to know about this work through a different thread. As a Pakistani, I started to share the enthusiasm and thought of some suggestions that KPK government and people of other provinces could evaluate on their own and follow if these suggestions could make good sense for them in a meaningful way. My first set of suggestions are about food security and agriculture and these suggestions could directly affect the lives of most people in KPK/other provinces in a great positive way.

Naya KPK | News & Updates on the development in KPK. | Page 140

Before suggestions related to agriculture, I have some ideas about food security. Since KPK imports most of its food needs from other provinces, and we are aware that good timing really matters when you buy different agricultural items. When a crop of any agricultural commodity hits the market, its price is close to the seasonal low and sometimes price of various agricultural items truly crashes and plummets due to excess supply. If you have determined the food needs for your province, the peak harvest season would be the best time to make controlled buying of those commodities so it would be easier to sell them in the local KPK markets throughout the year at relatively low prices for the relatively poor population.

Some food items are perishable and they really cannot be stored in open atmosphere for long and these are the ones where some intelligent use of basic technology can help preserve them. We know a lot of popular vegetables and other food items that become extremely cheap in harvest season, and can be preserved in bulk by freezing them and can be sold at ten times the price when these food items are "out of season". In foreign countries, there are a lot of businesses related to frozen food items and vegetables and it can easily be done on a very large scale by the KPK government. We are just not used to concept of frozen vegetables and it is not in vogue in our country but I am sure that economics should easily allow it on a large scale, we just need to take possible initiative in this direction. Really the companies who do similar business have huge margins and if the government is willing to take action, a lot of these things can be sold at very cheap prices and government will still not be subsidising anything. Making an intelligent system of procurement, preservation and delivering to people can easily decrease the end cost to KPK population for most of the food items. May be KPK government should do a systematic study on such a comprehensive project and I am sure it will prove to be very viable both in terms of economics and technology.

Naya KPK | News & Updates on the development in KPK. | Page 140

Some suggestions related to agriculture in KPK. The purpose of farming and agriculture is to make the best possible sustainable use of land. God has given KPK a very different weather and the type of land is also different from rest of the areas in our country. Due to these differences, we can grow so many different types of fruit and many unconventional agricultural commodities that can help the farmer earn many many times what is the current norm. The problem is that land holdings of people in KPK are mostly meager at best and typically the farmers are extremely poor. In most of these cases, the farmers use their land to grow conventional crops and many times live through the year depending on the food grown on their small lands. Though this helps the farmers to weather through the year without buying relatively more expensive food items from the market, this is really not the best use of their small land holdings. When deciding about the crop to grow on their land, if they had made judicious choice of fruit or other unconventional/conventional crops, they could have earned many many times more money. But again the problem is that it is impossible for those farmers who live off the food grown on their own land to break this cycle and convert to growing better choice of crops, since they would have to somehow find alternative means to support themselves through the year. And even if they had enough to survive through the year, many of them would need motivation and proper guidance towards better selection and handling of unconventional crops. I wanted to suggest that may be KPK government should make some sort of system that would encourage farmers to make the best possible use of their lands through judicious choice of conventional or unconventional crops. And if the farmers are willing to cooperate, they could be guaranteed a year's food supplies or until their crop matures, and when they would have sold the new harvest in the market, they would repay for the food support from the government. And the farmer could also be helped by some fair system that provides seeds and fertilizers at easy terms something middlemen like to do at huge margins. Many of our farmers are uneducated so the competent agriculture department would have to help the farmers for many years in all of the crop cycle starting from choice of crop, and including all other technical agriculture related matters. I strongly believe that if KPK farmers could make the best use of the different weather and land of the province, agriculture related income of the province could increase manifold and most of the farmers would be truly better off and, of course, pray for the new government of KPK for this agricultural uplift/revolution and greatly increased income.

I would follow with more suggestions in various other fields on this thread and also on my blog ahsanamin2999.wordpress.com

 

[AhsanAmin]

Here are some more related comments that I have copied from Leader's thread.

Naya KPK | News & Updates on the development in KPK. | Page 140

 

[AhsanAmin]

I had some more ideas about how we could create very successful agriculture and related businesses in KPK and other provinces. In the previous posts on this thread, I tried to present some thoughts about making the best use of land and this post builds further on the same ideas in a way that we could get closer to being very competitive in achieving full potential and promise out of our lands given various national and international standards.

I tried to suggest that the government would encourage farming of those crops/fruit/vegetable that can bring the most revenue to the people of KPK given the different and unique weather and special type of land. However I was not thoughtful enough in the previous posts to say that when you design a comprehensive strategy for the people of the province, you must include the possibility of large value addition by converting raw agricultural produce into more expensive products so that an average farmer would get far better livelihood. There could be many ways of gaining the best out of your harvest after the hard work of the whole season. The fruit and vegetable could be canned or possibly preserved in cheaper "tetra pack like" small boxes or pouches, and I am sure such packings can be easily designed by professionals in this field. We could make all sort of other delicious products like jams, pickle and other related food items in this category.

Some people might think that it would need huge infrastructure to make value addition on these lines. Most of the food value addition can be done within the villages or at some central point in the cluster of a few villages. All the labour intensive industrial activity could be kept very close to the villages that actually grow the produce. We know that while running most successful businesses in the line of food value addition, it is the cost of advertising and promoting their products and successful management of finances and loans from banks related to procurement of raw products from farmers are the largest headache which determine the success of many businesses. The skills associated with the actual industrial operation of value addition can easily be taught to residents of villages. And many of these difficult operations related to advertising on a large scale and financial guidance and related help can be centralized by the provinicial governments into a few companies that might possibly run on a commercial basis, or something better that the government could think on her own. These companies could buy products from farmers and assign a quality to every purchase and then market the products according to their quality and price the products in the market taking into account all costs and the competition.

When it comes to vocational institutes, It would be more interesting if they could be teaching more skills related to value addition in food as opposed to the current practice of putting extreme emphasis on making handicrafts and related skills.

We will have to make sure when we make a system that a spirit of competition and improvement of quality and innovation remains alive and people do not get any free money and intelligent hard work is rewarded. And no good system can be built on these lines in a few days or months and it would take several large years of planning and effort to create any successful system but the fruits of such effort will benefit many generations to come.

I would try to give more suggestions in the future but they have to be considered just initial ideas and food for thought so that people could brainstorm and plan better strategies for development.

 

[AhsanAmin]

Though I might not be competent to build on it on my own, work on the lines of above thoughts might also further participation of women in workforce and more economic self-reliance within the family system if we could encourage women to take part in activity related to "value addition in food" close to their villages and again there has to be some effort related to change in traditional activities of vocational institutes and they should teach right skills to women in this regard.

 

[AhsanAmin]

There is a related post that I wrote some time ago about a comprehensive water management and Floods disaster management. Here is the post. Pakistan has only a month’s worth of water left: Report | Page 3

KPK has been severely affected by the floods in the past and due to changing weather patterns into extreme moonsoon rains, it is possible that similar floods might follow with a frequency of 7-10 years. Some cities of the province are at extreme threat from the floods due to large population living on low lying areas. There has to be a systematic study on how to prevent the damage to population and property in case of any flood related disaster. The study has to find different possible scenarios of the intensity of floods and give appropriate intelligent response from each scenario. And the population has to be taught by the government about what they must do in case of floods so that there is minimum damage to the population and their property.

And the disaster management department must decide where to make large banks(bunds), where to breach the river banks, where to make flood canals, where to fill some reservoirs and how to do some other appropriate intelligent actions. I am not extremely familiar with flood related problems in KPK but I sould certainly say that intelligent planning can save people from 90% of the problems, if people are indeed taught and are well prepared to respond to the large floods.

Though people of parties other than PTI may not like me, if you could save life and property of poor people in natural disasters, they will never vote for anyone but PTI and this is where you have to show wisdom with goodwill and great intent of purpose.

 

[Leader]

I will give it a read

 

[AhsanAmin]

Transforming Agriculture in Pakistan into a Dynamic Part of Our Economy

Transforming Agriculture in Pakistan into a Dynamic Part of Our Economy
Agriculture in Pakistan employs about half of the population of Pakistan and contributes about a quarter to our GDP. One of the major reasons behind the slow growth in agriculture are low literacy level in the villages, employing backward and inefficient techniques in agriculture, very slow modernization and very little value addition in the raw agricultural produce. The purpose of this blog is to give suggestions towards a better, coherent and organized model of agriculture as opposed to current haphazard agricultural practices.

God has given our country a very fertile land. He also gave us a great weather — temperature, winds and rainfall pattern change quite dramatically across the country and along various seasons. And as we go from one corner of our country to the other corner, the varied mix of the weather parameters changes from one extreme to the other extreme. And we also have one of the best irrigation systems in the world.

All of the above factors decide what would be the optimal set of crops, vegetables, or fruit that would give maximum returns to the farmers and landowners. And if we want to make the best of our land and our enterprising people, we must take into account the benefits of value addition and processing of the raw agricultural produce.

Since most of our farmers are uneducated, in the world of information and technology, they usually cannot make the best decision about what to grow in their lands, and mostly just copy the more successful farmers in their area. This leads to inefficient haphazard agricultural practices that are mostly suboptimal when it comes to benefit to the farmer and rest of the community.

I am trying to give ideas about more organized agriculture. To describe the gist of my suggestions in a nutshell, I will try to give the following ideas and explain them later in the article.

1. The government must actively help the farmer with expert advice throughout the crop cycle including the choice of crop that the farmer would grow on his land.

2. The government will strongly encourage value addition and processed food preferably close to rural areas where the raw crop is grown.

3. The government will try to encourage microfinance banks and agricultural banks to work closely with the farmer.

4. The government will encourage formation of cooperative companies run by people with technical and industrial talent and business acumen who would work to add value and process the raw food grown in the villages. Farmers would also have a stake in these cooperatives.

5. There will be some form of insurance that would protect farmer from extreme crop damage from the calamities of the weather. The insurance would not cover man-inflicted losses.

6. The government will ask vocational institutes to impart skills related to food processing and value addition. They will also introduce programs related to culinary skills especially for women.

7. All of the above different but related operations must build on each other and work seamlessly together.

I would also suggest that large number of teams comprising three professionals will visit the farmer and his lands every week or two weeks. The members of the team would be

a. Technical Advisor related to agriculture.
b. Financial Advisor
d. Agricultural/Microfinance bank advisor

The teams will periodically visit each farmer and discuss with him and among themselves the developments and progress related to his crops and the related financial and logistics matters.

I start by defining the role of the Technical advisor. He will inform the farmer and rest of the group regarding technical issues regarding farmer’s crop. This would include everything from choice of crop, weather and temperature, pest control, optimal watering times and other factors to achieve a good yield.

Financial Advisor will help the farmer in financial decision making at the micro level. He will also discuss with the farmer the risks and rewards related to both his decisions and vagaries of the nature/weather. He will advise the farmer how to cope with financial problems and related difficulties keeping in mind the farmer’s financial standing. He will also explain how loans or aid from the government and loans from the Microfinance bank can help him throught the crop cycle and later. Financial Advisor will give possible projections of costs of input to the agriculture cycle of the crop and will also project most probable scenarios of how much his crop would fetch in the market. He would also help the farmer on practicalities of buying inputs for his crop and when to sell his harvest.

Microfinance Advisor will discuss with rest of the group how his bank can help in different scenarios and he will also try to protect the interests of his bank and will try to counter any possibility of deception and fraud.

Since the success of the farmer rests on the successful working of the group, I will state again that the group will help the farmer in his choice of the crop/fruit/vegetable considering weather, nature of the land, availability of water, farmer’s savings, and potential reward from the crop grown on his land while taking into account government’s loans and aid and microfinance bank’s loans. The group will also consider the benefits to the farmer from any possibility of value addition and food processing.

After working towards the optimal and successful harvest in a properly planned manner, the next step for the government is to work towards value addition by industrial processing and preservation of the agricultural produce. There are several traditional and some other novel ways to achieve this objective. The traditional approach would be to make jams, pickle and ketchups etc. A slightly better way that complements the first approach would be to preserve the fruit and vegetable in cans. Since canning is both expensive and environment unfriendly, we could use tetra pack like boxes and pouches with several aluminimum linings to preserve the fruit and vegetable while pasteurizing them in the industrial process of packing in the boxes/pouches. I am very confident that such aluminium lined boxes and pouches can easily be made that would preserve the freshness of processed fruit and vegetables. This approach will be cheaper than traditional canning of fruit and vegetables.

Even more novel and innovative approach to value addition would be to prepare great classis Baluchi, Pashtun, Punjabi and Sindhi meals under supervision of some of the best chefs, and package them in aluminium lined tetra pack boxes and sell them in both local and export markets. These specially prepared meals would be liked by Pakistani, Indian, Afghan, Iranian and Turkic diaspora abroad in western countries. I am very confident that this new line of business would become very successful quite soon if we could execute it with tact and competence. In Europe, there are a large number of very small family held companies that prepare high quality exotic food and this category makes significant enough part of trade within European nations. Though this would be misleading that we could come at par with those companies in a few years, we can certainly establish food brands that start to get noticed everywhere in the world and start gaining some popularity.

One could also suggest that several clusters of villages could make value addition cooperative companies with some help from the government. These cooperative companies would compete with other domestic privately held companies in the area of food processing. These cooperatives would run the industrial operations of preserving raw food and preparing processed food and later market them in national and international markets. Farmers, the farmers advisory group, industrial workers, technical staff and management would be given appropriate holding of shares in these cooperatives while some stock of shares will be floated on national stock exchanges. If the cooperatives become successsful, they could help in social uplift of the areas by building good schools, and hospitals.

I also suggest that Vocational schools would be set up to teach skills related to food processing and preservation. This kind of training is virtually non-existant in current vocational schools and if the government takes steps to promote organized and value added agriculture, this line of training must be a special priority in the vocational schools. The schools might also teach culinary skills and encourage their students to learn and experiment with local and international cuisine at some special vocational centers located in larger cities.

Another suggestions is to do some sort of crop protection insurance for the farmer against extremem damage to crops by the weather.

I would like to end this article by saying that people of Pakistan have great hope for their future and they do think that both political parties must do whatever they can to eradicate poverty and take our country towards a better future. If the current governments systematically take action for better future of Pakistan, we will indeed emerge as a successful nation and we look towards these political parties for that.

To our leaders, I quote some lyrics from a Coke Studio Song by Alamgir.

Steer it most cautiously, boatman
This boat of mine with a broken rim
The river seems endless as if there were no shore
Whether rainclouds rumble
Take us across to the other end, boatman
However loud these river ******** roar
Help me get my boat to the shore, boatman
Take us across to the other end, boatman


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