KHANEWAL: In a multi-billion dollar responsibility, the military launched Sunday’s cutting-edge corporate agriculture farming to guarantee national food security while gaining access to the export market, according to The News. An advanced corporate farming project has been started to improve Pakistan’s agriculture, according to Major General (retd) Tahir Aslam, managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) of FonGrow, a Fauji Foundation partner.
“Our main focus area has been import-substitution farming so that domestic production can eventually replace billions of dollars’ worth of imports,” he claimed. FonGrow is a pioneering step toward fully intelligent and automated farming in the nation as part of the Green Pakistan Initiative, the Pakistan Army’s flagship initiative.
FonGrow is a revolutionary step toward fully intelligent and automated farming in the nation as part of the Green Pakistan Initiative, the Pakistan Army’s flagship initiative.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and General Asim Munir, the Chief of the Army Staff, were present for the event celebrating this milestone, highlighting its significance.
During a Sunday media visit to the 2,250-acre site of the country’s first corporate farm, which is set to be formally launched by the prime minister and army chief today (Monday), FonGrow CEO spoke with journalists based in Lahore.
Aslam said that FonGrow was working on a model that investors from abroad could later emulate.
“We aim to raise corporate farms’ growth of wheat, cotton, oilseed crops, soybean, and sesame to 100,000 acres across the entire country. By requiring collaborations with different foreign and regional players, the Green Initiative aims corporate farming at one million acres of land, he added.
“We developed this platform to reduce dependency on foreign sources through increasing production locally. With less water, fertilizer, and other inputs used, our maize crop trial produced 20% more than the output of progressive farmers.
“FonGrow farm’s establishment is the start of a revolution in agriculture. At Porowal, a unique agricultural system covering 2,250 acres will be expanded over the course of the following five years by a comprehensive development plan. It is an area of deserted land,” he stated.
He made it clear in reply to a question that they were not against or opposed to small-scale farmers. Instead, he asserted that this program will aid in the development of excellent farming methods at all levels.
Manager Farms Muhammad Zahid Aziz stated that to increase the area under cultivation and improve per-acre production, the nation’s agriculture needs to be increased both horizontally and vertically. By using technology for resource conservation, FonGrow simultaneously pursues these two objectives.
In Bhakkar, Mankera, and Layyah, he stated, similar corporate farming in desert and semi-desert areas was also being introduced. High-efficiency farming was an important aspect of FonGrow corporate farming, according to irrigation consultant Mushtaq Ahmed Gill, who noted that center-pivot irrigation allowed for up to 90% savings in water usage.
From traditional flood irrigation, where the majority of the water is wasted before reaching the plants, this is an important shift.
