Punjab Agriculture Secretary Muhammad Mahmood on Saturday urged the agricultural experts to come with durable solutions to the problems of farming community and increase the productivity keeping new challenges in view.

Punjab Agriculture Secretary Muhammad Mahmood on Saturday urged the agricultural experts to come with durable solutions to the problems of farming community and increase the productivity keeping new challenges in view. He was chairing a meeting of University of Agriculture Faisalabad. UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan and all deans and directors attended the meeting. He said High Efficiency Irrigation System is not taking off in the country and sought the suggestions from the experts regarding reasons and measures in order to make it a success story. He said that they were launching a scheme of interest free loan for farming community through the smart phones under which Rs 25000 loan will be given for Rabi Season and Rs 40,000 for Kharif season. He said that in the coming years, increase in per acre production would be linked to the loan. Huge gap between the productivity of progressive and ordinary farmers exists, he said, adding that awareness and affordability to modern trend will help small farmers increase production. He said that they are putting the ICT among the top agenda as a step towards dissemination agricultural information including weather, market, use of input and seed etc among the farming community. It will help the ordinary farmer to catch up to the productivity of progressive farmers.He said that government had decreased the prices of the inputs by 17 percent and it has also waived off GST on the pesticides. He said that in the coming years, the prices will be further decreased to benefit the farmers. He said that the government was taking initiatives of establishing Agri Hi Tech Machinery Service Centre and directed the UAF to make the business plan for the purpose. He also called for developing the technologies to fight climate changes which has emerged as the potential threat . He said that a system needs to be devised to recharge the groundwater and urged the experts to work on a technology of drilling bore in every acre so that small farmers can get benefit from it. He said that cotton productivity faced the deterioration as the heavy water remained stagnated in the field as there was lack of mechanism to drain it out. He urged the UAF scientists to devise the strategies for agricultural problems, policy making, and rural development issue. He said that the government was working on drip irrigation on 20,000 acre in the province in which farmers will pay only 20 percent cost and will be run on solar energy. He stressed upon the need to devise a strategy to fight the mealybug and other diseases in order to increase the productivity.UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan said that cotton production had been facing the stagnation for the last 20 years. He said that this year, the cotton productivity had fallen due to climate changes. He said that the UAF had developed a short duration of cotton PB 896 this year that will prove best variety in the province. He said that the UAF had developed ten varieties of mango with excellent aroma and taste. He said that the UAF Department of Entomology was leading the Punjab Dengue Programme. He said that the UAF was the only institutions in the country which was is ranked in the top 100 universities of the country. He said that the citrus greening was heavily damaging the citrus crops. Tangible steps were being taken on the part of varsity to address the issue.