Indian Express | Sat Dec 04 2010
For a country ravaged by 22 years of war, resurrecting the farm sector is the biggest challenge. Stating this, Afghanistan Agriculture Minister Mohd Asif Rahimi, who was here to participate in Agro Tech 2010 said the war that was forced upon them has killed their livestock, and subsequent drought has put the farm sector in dire straits.
He said in 2008, they formulated a four-point programme to revive agriculture. And under this plan, their main focus would be to optimally utilise the natural resources.
“We have huge land sizes and lot of opportunities. We would like India to come and invest in our country. We will provide land on 90- year lease, security, power and easy bank credit besides simplifying norms,” he added while highlighting cold chain infrastructure, irrigation systems — just a fourth of its 8 million hectare land is irrigated— and agri processing industries as the potential areas of investment from the country.
“We are rising from ashes and need to learn a lot from India. We need scholarships from Indian farm universities, which are the best in the world,” he added. Afghanistan imports onions and potatoes from Punjab and exports dry fruits, grapes and melons. The future exports from the country could be olive oil, spices, cut flowers and shawls, the minister said.
Paddy transplanters, balers attract farmers
Already boasting of high density of tractors, Punjab farmers were seen flocking to stalls of paddy transplanters of Korean, German, Japanese and Chinese make, which are the cheapest. Another major attraction was paddy balers, which are used to tie harvested paddy in bales which is then sold for fuel to bio-mass plants.
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Photo courtesy Foreign Policy
