The president of Sindh Abadgar Board, Abdul Majeed Nizamani, and President of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Qamarzaman Shah, were critical of government attitude while dealing with the problems confronted by the farming communities.
The Secretary, who also remain under criticism, was trying to dispel what he thought were misperceptions about Sindh Agriculture Department dealing with the problems of farming community.
He was making efforts to impress upon growers that they should, without looking into the rear view mirror, participate in government efforts to rebuild the agriculture sector for their own survival and study how best deterioration in agriculture sector could be avoided.
He announced that the government was actively considering to constitute separate development groups for all major crops in the province with adequate representation of farmers.
He reiterated some of the steps taken by him with regard to cleaning and grading of farmers' seeds and new strategy for arresting marketing of spurious pesticides and fertilisers.
President Sindh Abadgar Board said there was no shortage of onion as Sindh expected to harvest surplus onion crop as compared to last year yet under the duty-free import policy of agriculture commodities Pakistan has imported around 3000 tons onion from Afghanistan. He said it was the time when Pakistan should export all agriculture commodities to minimise trade imbalance.
He demanded that wheat production target should be enhanced in view of the potential of the province and 4800 tubes-wells sanctioned in 1998 should be made operative on war footing before December.