How Pakistan's Agriculture Sector Fared During Year 2022-23?

Pakistan’s agriculture sector, contributes 22.9 percent in GDP and 37.4 percent in employment generation, ensures food security and provide raw material to the industrial sector.

It is also a source of foreign exchange earning and significant for sustainable growth. However, from last couple of years, the country observed climatic shocks which adversely affected agriculture sector.

This sector’s productivity is highly sensitive to the frequency of adverse climatic events like flood and drought along with abnormal heat waves, rain, and glacial melt.

More severely, the prolonged precipitation patterns increase river and inland water levels, resulting in flash and seasonal river and urban flooding commonly experienced in the recent past. Thus, flood hazard remains highly susceptible to other climatic factors, as it badly influences humans’ social-economic and politico-cultural domains.

During July-August 2022, Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented episode of territorial rains followed by flash flooding that damaged primarily two main subsectors, i.e., crops (important and others) and livestock.

Agriculture Performance 2022-23

Consequent upon the Floods-2022, the Rabi season crops have shown higher yield, which compensated the crop damages of the Kharif season, leading to an overall growth of agriculture sector to 1.55 percent.

As such, the production growth of wheat (5.4 percent, sugarcane (2.8 percent), and maize (6.9 percent) compensated the negative growth of cotton (41 percent) and rice (21.5 percent).

Furthermore, the normalization of livestock activities also led convergence toward the stability path. The overall decline of important crops during this year is 3.20 percent. This year witnessed an increase of 0.23 percent in other crops (contribute 3.32 percent in GDP) primarily due to increase in Oil seeds production by 53.15 percent. Cotton Ginning having share of 0.97 percent in agriculture and 0.22 percent in GDP has declined by 23.01 percent due to decrease in cotton production.

However, it is well compensated by the increase in production of other crops.

Livestock having share of 62.68 percent in agriculture and 14.36 percent in GDP, grew at 3.78 percent compared to 2.25 percent during last year.

The forestry sector having share of 2.23 percent in agriculture value addition and 0.51 percent in GDP, grew at 3.93 percent against 4.07 percent last year due to increase in timber production.

Fishing sector having share of 1.39 percent in agriculture value addition and 0.32 percent in GDP, grew at 1.44 percent compared to 0.35 percent during last year, according to Pakistan Economic Survey. 

Crop Position

During 2022-23, the contribution of important crops recorded at 18.23 percent to value addition in agriculture sector and 4.18 percent to GDP.

Other crops contributed 14.49 percent in value addition of agriculture sector and 3.32 percent in GDP.

Important Crops

Cotton

During 2022-23, cotton crop is drastically damaged due to the climatic changes. Cotton season started with the 7-10⁰C rise in temperatures from the last few years in months of March till May coupled with shortage of irrigation water, causing severe heatwave, which affected cotton germination, seedlings growth and leaf wilting problem.

This year, cotton recorded 0.3 percent contribution to GDP and 1.4 percent to the value added in agriculture.

During 2022-23, cotton area sown increased to 2,144 thousand hectares against 1,937 thousand hectares last year, revealing a growth of 10.7 percent.

However, due to floods that swept away the entire crops in Sindh & Balochistan its production remained low at 4.910 million bales against last year’s 8.329 million bales, showing a dip of 41.0 percent. In Punjab, cotton producing districts Rajanpur, DG Khan and Taunsa were worst hit and damaged the cotton crop.

Sugarcane

Sugarcane is a tropical crop cultivated mainly in Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It provides raw material to the 2nd largest agro-based sugar industry over the country. It provides employment to millions of rural farming and non-farming community.

In addition, it is a major source of livestock fodder during winter season. Its production accounts for 3.7 percent in agriculture’s value addition and 0.9 percent in GDP.

During 2022-23, sugarcane was cultivated on 1,319 thousand hectares showing increase of 4.7 percent compared to 1,260 thousand hectares last year.

The main factor contributed to more area sown were lucrative market prices of last year. Its production increased by 2.8 percent to 91.111 million tonnes over last year (88.651 milliontonnes).

Rice

After wheat, rice is the second main staple food crop and second major exportable commodity after cotton. It contributes 1.9 percent of value added in agriculture and 0.4 percent in GDP.

During the last few years, production of coarse types is increasing as the farmers are bringing more areas under coarse hybrid types. During 2022-23, the crop was cultivated on 2,976 thousand hectares, recorded decline of 15.9 percent over 3,537 thousand hectares last year.

Its production declined from 9.323 million tonnes in 2021-22 to 7.322 million tonnes in 2022-23, registering a negative growth of 21.5 percent.

Rice production, however, is lower than last year. This less production in combination
with high input prices has caused increase in paddy price.

Maize

Maize contributes 3.0 percent value added in agriculture and 0.7 percent to GDP. During 2022-23, maize crop was cultivated on 1,720 thousand hectares, showing increase of 4.1 percent over last year’s cultivation of 1,653 thousand hectares.

However, its production increased by 6.9 percent to 10.183 million tonnes from 9.525 million tonnes last year. As such, the increase in production was mainly due to increase in area sown and improved yield.

Wheat

During 2022-23, wheat was cultivated on 9,043 thousand hectares against last year’s area of 8,977 thousand hectares recorded increase of 0.7 percent. Wheat contributes 8.2 percent value added in agriculture and 1.9 percent to GDP.

The production of wheat stood at 27.634 million tonnes compared to 26.208 million tonnes last year, a growth of 5.4 was observed in wheat production.

Wheat production increased as government had announced Kissan Package-22 to mitigate the impact of Flood-2022 losses. The government has also increased Minimum Support Price (MSP) to Rs 3900/40 kg compared to Rs 2200/40 kg ensuring better economic returns to mitigate higher input cost.