The provincial minister for agriculture, Mohammad Ismail Rahu has said that in order to promote agriculture in Sindh and protect crops from the use of toxic pesticides, 50 centers of Natural Enemy Farm Reservoir (NEFR) had been set up across Sindh.
This he said while inaugurating a center of NEFR at Syed Manzoor Hussain Shah Jilani farm near Sultanabad. The Provincial Minister said that the growers mostly used various pesticides to protect the crops from insects but the effects of these pesticides remained in the crops which, he said,often caused diseases in human beings. Mr Rahu informed that there were 1 million species of agro-insects in the world out of which only 1% were harmful for crops and to eradicate them NEFR centers were being set up not only to protect crops from pesticides but also diseases and the government’s health bill would significantly be reduced.
He said that Sindh Irrigated Agriculture Productivity Enhancement Project (SIAPEP) had been launched by the Sindh Agriculture Department which had three different components under which water courses would be lined to prevent wastage of water and deal with water shortage. He informed that in the first phase of this project work of lining of 5500 water courses had been started across Sindh out of which 4232 water courses had been completed while remaining watercourses would be completed by the end of this year.
He said that due to shortage of water in Sindh, a drip irrigation system was being introduced which had yielded better results as under this system water was consumed less and production increased. He said that all the tube wells installed by the Sindh agriculture department to the farmers would be converted to the solar system so that the farmers could avoid heavy bills. He said that the second component of SIAPEP included laser leveling under which technical training was being imported so that farmers could select appropriate land for appropriate crop cultivation.
He said that they took many revolutionary initiatives to boost bio-saline agriculture in Tharparkar district to bring the real change in the lifestyle of Tharis.
