Pakistan being the agrarian country, needs to utilize its full potential in the agriculture sector adopting modern farming techniques and shifting its focus from conventional agriculture methodology.

Government should give emphasize to increase its exports in the agro sectors through research and developing more varieties of agriculture produce, said Mahfooz Elahi, President of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry, while addressing a meeting of the representatives associated in agro business.

Our country has vast areas of cultivated land but due to conventional way of farming and lack of know how of modern technology and sowing methods, Pakistan still is unable to increase its per yield production, which is also the lowest in the region.

President was of the view that our country greatly relies on agriculture, thus modernization and diversification of crops is very much needed in this sector to get optimum results and increase exports.

New varieties of seeds should be developed and looking at the internal requirements, agriculture research institutes must provide guidance to the farmer for cultivating crops in demand in the other countries, he opinioned.

He also proposed that growers should also give attention on unseasonal agriculture produce because it would provide them a good opportunity of exporting these commodities to other countries along with meeting domestic needs.

Elahi said that demand of organic food is increasing worldwide; therefore, Pakistan can fetch a good market giving more attention to organic agriculture. The people particularly in Europe are very much health conscious and pay more for organic food, he added.

International agriculture experts must be invited to find ways and means for increasing per yield production and developing new varieties for fruits and vegetables. Also farmers must be educated on growing techniques to get optimum production, he suggested.

President ICCI said that agriculture research institutes should also introduce techniques to farmers for increasing shelf life of perishable items because currently a large portion of vegetables and fruits are wasted due to unavailability of preservation methodology.

He said that for maintaining consistent production, adequate supply of water must be ensured and proposed for using solar water pumps at tube wells. The production of crops is also hurt because of load shedding plans thus use of solar water pumps can help resolve this problems.