Deputy Agriculture Counselor, United States Embassy in Islamabad Devid Wolf Visits UAF

Deputy Agriculture Counselor, United States Embassy in Islamabad Devid Wolf on Friday said the United States assists developing countries agriculture for economic growth to increase the supply and lower the cost of food by making agriculture more efficient, productive, and sustainable. In this regard, the USDA is committed to uplift the agriculture sector of Pakistan by providing funds in the various development projects and researches. He made a visit to the University of Agriculture Faisalabad and called on UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan at Syndicate Hall. He also reviewed the USDA ongoing projects aimed at uplifting of agricultural sector of the country. All dean and director were present on the occasion. He appreciated the pace of work on the projects and UAF commitment to make the progress in the sector. He said that the goal of the projects was to eradicate of extreme poverty and hunger and requires significant investment in agriculture by donors and the private sector. Talking about various initiatives, he said that his country was working on developing agricultural markets, trade, and finance; promoting food and nutritional security; funding collaborative science and technology research efforts; organizing volunteer technical assistance and extension services and developing and supporting sound programs for livestock and sustainable agriculture. Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad told the delegation that the university was running around 150 projects with the financial assistance of US for agriculture sector. He told that the campus community was also working on multiple outreach programmes for educating the farming community keeping in view increased productivity in order to ensure the food security in the country. He said that at Broka farm, the university was developing an ideal ecosystem by setting up poultry and fish farms, crops fields with the latest techniques etc to demonstrate and promote it before the farming community. He said that to cope with the dengue epidemic, the UAF had been working on 12 research projects on dengue with the help of United States that would bring tangible results. He said that funds being provided by US were used in faculty development, technology transfer and product commercialization, research. He said that the university had prepared a fertilizer model to give a free guidelines regarding balance use of the fertilizer that will increase the productivity 40 percent. He said that in this regard, calls centers had been set up in 36 districts of the Punjab with the facility of labs for soil analysis.