How Pakistani Economy Can Flourish Through Agricultural Advancement? During the earlier years of Pakistan, agriculture served as a key economic activity but over time, the situation has changed. The industrial revolution and changing economic paradigm resulted in a change of profession. Pakistan has tried to introduce digitization and tech based innovation in agriculture sector. For this, it has engaged international partners as well. For instance, Korea invested US $700,000 for development of agriculture sector in Pakistan. Still, it seems the country is lagging behind. So, we review the entire context.

Global Advancements

In the past 10 years, around $6.7 billion is invested in Agriculture technology in the last 5 years and 1.9$ billion in the year 2020 alone. Major technology innovations around the globe have focused on the following areas.

• Indoor Vertical Farming:

Indoor vertical farming is defined as the practice of growing your crops vertically, either in form of stacked layers or directly on a wall, instead of the horizontal way across acres of fields. In this way, farmers can grow crops during the whole year by controlling light, temperature, weather effects, water, and carbon dioxide levels as well.

This method of farming is cost-effective, can increase crop yields, uses 90% less water as compared to traditional farming, reduces the labor cost. Vertical farming is easy to operate – no professional agricultural expertise is required.

• Farm Automation:

Farm automation (also known as smart farming is a variety of tech innovations used in traditional farming to enhance the food production process and improve quality. A large number of companies are working on innovation to develop drones, autonomous tractors, robotic harvesters, automatic watering, Automatic irrigation, and seeding and weeding robotics. Automation technology can help us to resolve major issues from consumer preferences, labor shortages, and the environmental footprint of farming.

• Livestock Farming Technology

Livestock farming technology is revolutionizing the world of livestock management that makes tracking and managing livestock much easier. It also includes nutritional technologies, genetics, digital technology, and more. It can enhance the capacity of production, welfare, or management of animals and livestock.

The concept of the ‘connected cow’ is to enhance milk production by keeping cows healthier and improving breeding efficiency. Putting individual wearable sensors on cattle can help us to track the location, well-being, and health of the cattle.

Animal genomics is a study of looking at the entire gene landscape of a living animal and how they interact with each other to influence the animal’s growth and development. It helps in the animal selection, cattle genomics, and breeding decisions which optimize profitability and yields of livestock herds.

Sensor and data technologies are becoming increasingly tech-heavy for the current livestock industry. It can enhance more productivity and welfare of livestock by detecting sick animals and intelligently recognizing methods for improvement.

• Modern Greenhouses

Modern greenhouses have huge benefits, using LED lights and automated control systems to perfectly tailor the growing environment. It enables effective management, reduces risks caused by unfavorable weather conditions, optimizes growing conditions. Successful greenhouse companies locate themselves near urban areas to capitalize on the ever-increasing demand for local food, no matter the season.

• Precision Agriculture
  

Precision agriculture is the management strategy of increasing agriculture productivity and assisting management decisions by using high technology analysis tools. It is a new concept adopted all over the world to enhance productivity, efficiency, quality, profitability and ensure the effective management of fertilizers and irrigation processes.

• Artificial Intelligence

The expansion of digital agriculture and its related technologies has opened a variety of opportunities for new data. Satellites, remote sensors, and UAVs can collect information 24 hours per day over an entire field. Artificial intelligence allows monitoring plant health, temperature, and soil condition, etc. Due to this, farmers can understand the situation on the ground more accurately and more quickly.

• Blockchain

 Blockchain is used to solve urgent issues regarding food fraud, traceability of food, supply chain inefficiency and safety recalls in the current food system. Blockchain’s exclusive decentralized structure ensures verified products and practices to create a market for premium products with translucency.

This technology helps to improve food safety as it enables the traceability of information in the food supply chain. It provides a reliable path to store and manage data, which enhances growth. Apart from that, it can reduce transaction costs, which will benefit farmers’ access to markets and generating more revenue.

• Drip Irrigation system

Drip Irrigation is a highly efficient water and nutrient delivery system for growing crops. It delivers water and nutrients directly to the plant’s root zone, in the right amounts, in this way each plant gets exactly what it needs, to grow. It allows farmers to produce higher yields apart from that it saves water, fertilizers, energy, time, and other crop protection products.

The Pakistani Case

Agriculture is the largest sector of Pakistan’s economy. Around 42.3% of the population, is directly or indirectly, relies on this sector. According to the Economic Survey 2019-2020, This sector contributes about 19.3% in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is the largest source of foreign exchange earnings. The total cropped area of Pakistan is 23.4m hectares and is primarily worked by smallholders averaging 6.4 acres per farm. However, despite good contribution to the national economy, agriculture productivity has a declining trend, impeding economic growth and causing food security concerns. Due to these challenges, it is difficult for Pakistan to starts embracing modern agriculture technology and innovation to protect and enhance the natural resource base while increasing productivity.

It has developed strong bureaucratic networks. For instance, Pakistan Agricultural Research Council is a federal entity. It is engaged in managing the crops, conducting research and all about the agricultural landscape in Pakistan.

While the developing world is rapidly adopting agriculture technology, but the situation of Pakistan is far from satisfactory. the major factors that contribute to Pakistan’s low Productivity as compare to other countries in the region include a lack of mechanization and non-availability of modern agriculture technology, usage of non-certified seeds, improper application of nutrients, lack of application of fertilizers, lack of farmer training and a lack of financial credit.

The farmers in Pakistan works on fields to grow their crops throughout the year, but when their crops get ready, they did not get competitive market rates. Thus, the quality of goods and commodities is badly affected. This process puts farmers into a situation where they hardly manage to pay back loans that may have been taken for crop cultivation, and they end up making little profit.

Pakistan is a fertile land but most of the dry areas in the country are of no use due to the non-availability of a proper mechanism to provide water. There is a need for the adoption of new tools to encounter problems in the country.

The unusual temperature and humidity during the summer of 2019 had the worst effects. This includes widespread harvest losses across cotton, rice, and maize crops across much of Punjab and Sindh areas.

Until now Advance technologies are not used in Pakistan, smallholders continue to use old and less effective technologies, which leads to stagnant productivity, growth as well as returns, particularly in the horticulture and livestock sub-sectors.

Most of the farmers are not educated, they do not know how to access information using the latest technology that could improve yields to get better market rates for their harvested crops. The farmers mainly depend upon traditional information systems and are not familiar with modern technologies, whereas farmers in developed countries have realized the importance of information-driven economies.

The livestock employee about 30 million people, the majority of whom live in the rural areas of the country. As the population and urbanization increase, the demand for livestock products will also increase. consequently, it will be difficult to fulfill this demand over the next few years. Most animals are reared by rural masses who lack the advanced knowledge of animal breeding and do not possess the required capital to invest in the prevention, treatment, and control of animal ailments.

Another difficulty of the livestock sector is the lack of technologically well-equipped laboratories for accurate disease diagnosis. Additionally, limited facilities do not reach farming communities in distant areas. To improve livestock and poultry production and meet the population’s demand for animal nutrition, overall performance needs to be improved.

Opposing Agricultural Advancements

To improve agricultural production, Pakistan needs to adopt modern agriculture technology to save water, time, and manpower.

• The government of Pakistan must make a strong and stable policy, legal and regulatory framework that would provide an environment to facilitate long-term investment and technology transfer by firms and other innovation actors.
• Farmer’s decision to invest and produce agriculture products depends upon their financial condition. If their financial resources are not enough, farmers may discourage to adopt modern technology. The government should provide low-interest loans and incentives that increase farmers’ investment choices and provide them with more effective tools to manage risks.
• Increasing food demand due to a growing population vertical farming should be adopted to produce more food per square meter. This not only produces more but uses less water, produces crops without any climatic effect, allows the crop to grow year-round.
• On addressing the water shortage issue especially in Sindh areas, the Government of Pakistan must have to provide Drip Irrigation facility to farmers as incentives. Using modern technology will not only resolve water shortage problems in dry areas but will also result in better growth of crops.
• Climate change projections accompanied by the rapidly changing weather patterns needs Indoor Framing such as Modern Greenhouses, which will also help you protect your crops from the outside weather, pests, and disease. You can minimize the risks of locust attacks which can affect your crops.
• Climate change projections accompanied by the rapidly changing weather patterns needs Indoor Framing such as Modern Greenhouses, which will also help you protect your crops from the outside weather, pests, and disease. You can minimize the risks of locust attacks which can affect your crops.
• Another problem in Pakistan is the information gap. Farmers in villages are not aware regarding credit facilities, taking care of crops modern agriculture methods it is necessary to provide timely, accurate, and current information about facilities provided by Government. This results in decreasing their agricultural production.
• Introduction to Artificial intelligence and Precision agriculture system in Pakistan is also necessary. Both help to reduce labor cost, electricity, and diesel usage, Provide better information for management decisions.
• The government must adopt blockchain technology to help farmers get fair prices, easy access towards the market and generating revenue, transportation, and food safety, identification of supply chain.
• Keeping in view the increasing demand for animal products, there is a need to develop the livestock sector by introducing new advanced technology used by developed countries as discussed above. It results in more production of livestock products, increases breeding efficiency, keeps animals healthier, helps in management, and reduces input cost.

Agriculture is the most important for Pakistan as our economy is largely relying on this sector. From the above explanation, we conclude that advancement in the agricultural sector is a must for the economic development of a country. Introducing advanced technology, we contribute more to national income, improves the efficiency of resource allocation and which expand the size of the agriculture market, improves the competitiveness of exports and it also contributes to the foreign exchange earnings of the country.