The University of Agriculture Faisalabad will set up farmers market at Jhang Road, helping in bringing the poor farmers from the exploitation of middlemen.

The University of Agriculture Faisalabad will set up farmers market at Jhang Road, helping in bringing the poor farmers from the exploitation of middlemen. It was stated by UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan while chairing UAF Endowment Board of Directors (BoD) Meeting. Farmers Associate Chief Executive Aafaq Ahmad Tiwana, UAF Registrar Muhammad Hussain, Treasure Umer Saeed, Chief Planning Officer (r) Natiq Hussain, Endowment Fund Executive Director Prof Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir, Dr Makhdoom Abdul Jabbar from PARB, Australian Linkages Programme ED Ahmad B Mahar, KPK Agriculture University’s Dr Rizwan and other notables were present on the occasion. The Vice Chancellor said that the market will enable the farmers to sell their products without the role of the middlemen. He said the UAF was also running a farmers market near Ghulam Muhammad Abad. He said that the farmers markets will be extended to the other districts where sub-campuses of the UAF were functioning. Talking about fruitfly, he said that national fruit-fly programme must be kicked off to fight the disease with effective ways. He said that the disease is becoming responsible for low productivity and less profit of the farming community. He said that if we control over the fruit-fly, we can earn heavy foreign exchanges also by exporting to the other countries. He said that our mango was in the high demand but due to disease, Pakistani mango is facing serious threats. He said that the UAF would devise a national and international conference on fruit-fly for policy recommendations for the government. He also said that the UAF was taking all steps to educate the farming community about the latest practices and ways in line with international standards through sms and cyber technologies. He said that the world is excelling in agriculture with the use of precision agriculture but we are still far lagging behind as it has become essential to adopt the technology to meet the requirement of increasing population. Aafaq Ahmad Tiwana said that in the United States, as many as 8000 farmers markets are functioning. He stressed the need to adopt the mechanism in Pakistan aimed at benefiting the farming community. Talking about the precision agriculture (PA), he said that the precision agriculture help in reducing the cost and the balanced usage of input though the satellites. He was of the view that PA is playing an active role in the agricultural development of the modern world. The meeting also approved Rs 110.903 million budget of the Endowment Fund Presented by Treasurer Umar Saeed. Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir said that the endowment fund was making all out efforts for the technology transfer in order to address the issues of farming community at their doorstep . He said that tangible research and development activities were being carried out. He said the commercialization of the product will boost the agricultural productivity.