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The enactment of 18th Constitutional Amendment in 2010 was followed by devo-lution of most of the functions of the erstwhile Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Live-stock (MINFAL) to the Provinces and the MINFAL was formally abolished on June 30, 2011. Instead, a new Ministry of National Food Security and Research was established1 for better execution of un-devolved functions as well as attaining and maintaining national food security. The functions assigned to the new Ministry are at Annex-1. This devolution of re-sponsibilities to provinces led to increased attention to agriculture2 with a common notion that there is a significant untapped potential for economic growth and employment creation associ-ated with productivity improvement of traditional crops and importantly diversification to-wards high-value and climate smart agriculture, including livestock, and post-harvest value addition. Unlocking this potential for all these components requires a transformative approach that would include major policy reforms, institutional changes, and a re-orientation of public resources away from wasteful subsidies to smart subsidies and productive public investments.
Agriculture, worldwide, has seen remarkable transformation in farming practices, institutional frameworks and policies during the last three decades. Dynamic international markets and the diffusion of bioinformatics technology are shifting farming towards a new organizational model. Production systems are seeking new forms of coordination and control, increasing demand for traceability of origin, and greater integration into international markets. Public research programs are looking beyond mono-cropping systems toward integration of farming, cattle-raising and forestry and whole agriculture innovation system. Global positioning systems (GPS) and computerized agricultural machinery linked via satellites is promoting precision agriculture where inputs are calibrated exactly to the differences in soil and farm activities while farmers are looking for their linkages with output markets for their produce. Commitments to international agreements and conventions regarding biodiversity, climate change, food security, and land use are creating a new bottom line for agricultural practices. This necessitates a new institutional and regulatory framework.
The state intervention in the agriculture market and trade policies, including ad-ministered prices or protective trade policies, with the objective of supporting food secu-rity, income generation for growers, and affordability for consumers has a long history. Most of these have been phased out through the late 1980s and 1990s though, wheat (through domestic procurement, temporary import/export control imposing regulatory duties, and sub-sidized sales to select flour mills) and sugarcane (through import tariffs, as well as indicative prices and export subsidies) still are the two major crops with public intervention. In addition, import tariffs and other restrictions protecting dairy products and vegetable oils remains. Be-sides, there are input subsidies on fertilizers, electricity for water pumping1 or implicitly, on canal irrigation water.
This working paper takes stock of Pakistan's water resource availability, delineating water supply system and its sources including precipitation and river flows, and the impact of increasing climatic variability on the water supply system. In particular, the paper focuses on the current water usage and requirements in the agricultural sector, and how changing climatic conditions will affect the consumption patterns. With inflows expected to become more variable in the coming years, the severity of climatic extremities will become more pronounced, driving up water demands in addition to the demand increase from a rising population and urbanization. Over extraction of groundwater resources is also disturbing the water calculus and pushing the country towards a critical demand-supply gap.
Effective governance is one of the key challenges for both developing and developed countries. Governments, today, are increasingly encountering complex and cross-cutting issues such as economic and financial volatility, internal and external conflicts, growing social tensions, adverse demographic trends, climate change vulnerabilities, weak regulatory regimes, huge infrastructure and service delivery gaps, state and elite capturing and sustaining rule of law. Faced with growing criticism of ineffectiveness of state institutions undermining country’s economic, social and political development because of weakening capacity of public officials to pace up with emerging challenges, there is a renewed interest in reforming the governance and reforming the civil service.
Ethnicity and Development explores the impact of ethnic fragmentation on the success or failure of nations and uses case studies of Bangladesh and Pakistan to illustrate this. It analyzes the role of institutions in engendering economic and social progress and challenges the New Institutional Economics (NIE) narrative. The book argues that the NIE narrative has some gaps, particularly that it is blind to ethnic fragmentation and therefore does not account for the construction of institutions that can build national cohesion in low- and low-middleincome countries (L/LMICs). It shows that L/LMICs have a different cultural context and that they need to first build national cohesion on a foundat...
Agriculture and Irrigation sectors except for national food security and federal agriculture research have been devolved to the provinces following Eighteenth Constitutional Amendment in 2010. The Government of Sindh has approved and notified its first ever Agriculture and Livestock Policy in April 2018. To achieve objectives outlined in the Policy, it is imperative to increase investment in agriculture sector substantially to unleash the full potential of agriculture both for inclusive growth and economic development in the province. Moving towards this desirable goal of enhancing investment in agriculture and irrigation, it is vital to understand current resource sharing between the federa...
In 2009, Ghana began pursuing the devolution of functions and responsibilities from the central government to the country’s 216 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs). Agriculture was among one of the first sectors to be devolved, a process that became effective in 2012. This paper analyzes how this transition has proceeded, with a focus on the implications for agricultural civil servants within the MMDAs, accountability to citizens, and agricultural expenditures. Empirically, the paper draws on a survey of 960 rural households, 80 District Directors of Agriculture (DDAs), district level budget data from 2012 to 2016, and semi-structured interviews with a range of national and local government stakeholders.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended local, national, and global food systems, and put the Sustainable Development Goals further out of reach. But lessons from the world’s response to the pandemic can help address future shocks and contribute to food system change. In the 2021 Global Food Policy Report, IFPRI researchers and other food policy experts explore the impacts of the pandemic and government policy responses, particularly for the poor and disadvantaged, and consider what this means for transforming our food systems to be healthy, resilient, efficient, sustainable, and inclusive. Chapters in the report look at balancing health and economic policies, promoting healthy diets and nutr...