Agricultural Productivity Plan for Next Season Discussed

(ST)- Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform has recently approved three new determinatives, the first is to conduct a review and modify (if necessary) twice during the agricultural seasons, the second is to insert organic farming
for the first time in an area estimated at 33,000 hectares distributed at the country level, and the third is to emphasize on preservative agriculture for the second season (25 thousand hectares in Hasakah governorate and 1,300 hectares in Hama governorate).

The special meeting to discuss the agricultural productivity plan for the next season which was chaired by the Minister of Agriculture, Ahmed Qadri, and attended by Minister of Water Resources, Dr. Bassam Hanna, Chairman of the General Federation of Peasants, Head of the Federation of Chambers of Agriculture, General Manager of Agricultural Cooperative Bank, Ministries of Industry and Internal trade and Consumer Protection.

 During the meeting, the conferees stressed on supporting agricultural sector  to enhance its competitiveness and contribute to its development, ensuring food security, the integration of the agricultural sector with other sectors, the emphasis on the application of the laws that protect the natural resources of agricultural including land, water, the desert and forestry, the re-introduction of incentives in productive projects in order to achieve raise work efficiency, identifying economic priorities for producing agricultural crops and ensuring production requirements through the public and private sector in the quantities and the appropriate times.

They also underlined the need  of searching for alternatives of high economic revenues, developing scientific agricultural research extension, education, rehabilitation and resettlement of modern technologies, increasing the investments of private sector in irrigation sector and accelerating the implementation of irrigation projects, encouraging the establishment of marketing companies and institutions in all sectors to increase marketing opportunities, and the trend towards economic agriculture and developing programs for economic alternatives, focusing on services that support the production and promotion of agricultural research to do the necessary researches , and the need to pay more attention to livestock production and achieving  greater importance and integration in vegetable production.

Returning to the draft of agricultural productivity plan (which will be submitted to the Cabinet), figures of the Ministry of Agriculture have indicated that the plan for the wheat crop during the season (2013/ 2014) reached 4,000,809 tons, 1,000,622 tons of barley, 1,000,307 tons of sugar beet, 772 324 tons of cotton, 34204 tons of tobacco, increasing the area of the potato crop to meet the needs of growing population, 1,000,185 tons of olive, 430,000 tons of vine, 400,000 tons of apples, 78,000 tons of pistachios, 33,000 tons of pears, 1,000,268 tons of citrus, 595,000 tons of tomatoes, and 54,000 tons of cucumber.

Sharif al Khatib.