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6 days ago | 
dawn.com | Khalid Wattoo |Waqar Ahmad
In Pakistan’s rural areas, rising mechanisation in the agriculture sector has become a major driver of growing unemployment. Traditionally, in the country, mechanisation was synonymous with tractorisation — simply increasing the number of tractors. However, the current phase of agricultural mechanisation is powered by a much wider array of machines, including combine harvesters, half-feed rice harvesters, rice transplanters, corn pickers, corn planters, and vegetable harvesters.
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1 week ago | 
dawn.com | Khalid Wattoo |Waqar Ahmad
A large trade deficit has remained one of Pakistan’s most persistent and deep-rooted structural economic challenges. In the past, this chronic imbalance between imports and exports has led to the accumulation of huge foreign debt and a continuous depletion of the country’s foreign exchange reserves. In FY24, the trade deficit stood at $24.09 billion and is projected to widen further in the current fiscal year.
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2 weeks ago | 
dawn.com | Khalid Wattoo |Waqar Ahmad
Pakistan’s agriculture sector is grappling with a deepening crisis, which is likely to worsen in the coming years. The prices of agricultural commodities have been on a consistent downward slide in international markets, and so have they in local markets. Meanwhile, agricultural input prices in Pakistan continue to rise.
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3 weeks ago | 
dawn.com | Chaudhary Mohammad Ashraff |Khalid Wattoo
Pakistan’s agriculture sector, which consumes over 90 per cent of the country’s available water, is becoming increasingly dependent on groundwater due to multiple factors, including declining river flows, erratic rainfall, expansion of water-intensive rice and sugarcane crops, increased cropping intensity, and more recently, the widespread adoption of solar-powered tubewells that offer minimal operating costs, which encourages indiscriminate pumping of groundwater.
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1 month ago | 
asianews.network | Khalid Wattoo |Waqar Ahmad
April 29, 2025ISLAMABAD – In late March 2025, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics released the country’s economic growth figures for the second quarter (October-December) of FY25. The data painted a worrying picture: the agriculture sector grew by just 1.1 per cent. The first quarter was even worse, barely registering a growth rate of 0.74pc (revised figure). That is a massive fall from FY24, when agriculture posted a robust 8.17pc and 5.82pc growth in Q1 and Q2, respectively.
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1 month ago | 
dawn.com | Khalid Wattoo |Waqar Ahmad
In late March 2025, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics released the country’s economic growth figures for the second quarter (October-December) of FY25. The data painted a worrying picture: the agriculture sector grew by just 1.1 per cent. The first quarter was even worse, barely registering a growth rate of 0.74pc (revised figure). That is a massive fall from FY24, when agriculture posted a robust 8.17pc and 5.82pc growth in Q1 and Q2, respectively.
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1 month ago | 
dawn.com | Chaudhary Mohammad Ashraff |Khalid Wattoo
This wheat season has turned out even more punishing for farmers than the last. Buyers are scarce, and market prices have plunged to around Rs2,200-2,300 per maund — far below production costs and nearly half the support price announced for the two crops of 2023 and 2024. Even more concerning, Punjab’s harvest — accounting for nearly 75 per cent of national production — has yet to peak.
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2 months ago | 
dawn.com | Chaudhary Mohammad Ashraff |Khalid Wattoo
Pakistan, home to over 250 million people, is edging close to a deeper water crisis. Climate change is tightening its grip, with rising temperatures, shrinking glaciers, and increasingly erratic rainfall. As a result, the water supply has become less reliable than ever. Hotter days mean higher evaporation, driving up demand for both drinking water and crop irrigation — which consumes over 90 per cent of the country’s available water.
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2 months ago | 
dawn.com | Khalid Wattoo |Waqar Ahmad
Just recently, the prime minister constituted a 15-member committee tasked with formulating policy and administrative measures to revive cotton production in the country. Once a net exporter, Pakistan touched a production peak of 13.96 million bales in 2014-15. Since then, however, output has experienced a dramatic downturn, plummeting to just 5.5m bales in 2024-25 — 50 per cent below target and 34pc lower than last year’s yields.
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Feb 23, 2025 | 
dawn.com | Waqar Ahmad |Khalid Wattoo |Zohaib Majeed
In recent years, Pakistan has been grappling with twin challenges: ensuring an adequate food supply to meet the dietary needs of a rapidly growing population (food security) and safeguarding public health by mitigating hazards during food production, processing, and storage (food safety). Pakistan is severely impacted by its ineffective food control system. One in five people has a foodborne illness — twice the global average.
