Author: Zainab Iqtedar
The agricultural sector in Pakistan is vital to the economy, supporting a significant portion of the population directly and indirectly. It contributes around one fourth to the GDP and employs half of the labor force. This sector is essential for feeding both rural and urban communities.
Pakistan produces a wide array of agricultural goods, such as rice, wheat, cotton, fruits, and vegetables, which are exported globally, boosting foreign exchange earnings. However, the sector confronts various obstacles like water scarcity, climate change, soil degradation, research gaps, supply chain issues, and funding shortages.
Despite these difficulties, sustainable agricultural businesses and organic farming are emerging as promising solutions, promoting economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Given agriculture’s economic importance and the challenges it confronts, it’s crucial to explore how sustainable practices can address these issues and foster the sector’s development.
Organic Farming: A Catalyst for Change
Organic farming is a trusted way of growing things that helps fix the problems caused by the green revolution, like harming the soil, air, water, and health. It’s a chance to use methods that are good for the environment, use different kinds of plants, and traditional ways of doing things in production, distribution, and disposal. This way of farming is becoming more popular to make people and nature healthier after the problems that arose from the green revolution.
Sustainable agriculture means farming in a way that does less harm to the environment, makes farming more profitable, and treats people fairly.
The Benefits of Organic Farming
Conventional farming has faced criticism for harming biodiversity, causing soil erosion, and polluting water more. This is because it often uses a lot of man-made fertilizers and pesticides.
Organic farming is seen as a much better option for producing food sustainably. It doesn’t use pesticides and includes a greater variety of plants, which helps biodiversity. This leads to improved soil quality and less pollution from fertilizers and pesticides washing into water sources.
Moreover, Organic farming helps protect public health and research shows that organic foods have lots of good nutrients like Vitamin C, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus. Also, these foods have fewer nitrates and pesticide leftovers compared to regular fruits, vegetables, and grains.
A Green Future: The Road Ahead
To date, there has not been a cohesive policy on organic farming and sustainable agriculture in Pakistan, partly due to the fact that organic farming has smaller yields which is not profitable for farmers. However, as society has become more health conscious, there has been a greater demand for organic produce. There is the additional incentive of profits from exporting organic food. It is important for the government to update the country’s farming policies, for the betterment of the agricultural lands and the people.