Upskilling farm workers

Pakistan’s agriculture sector is short on growth and productivity compared to many other countries with comparable agro-climatic conditions. The most commonly cited constraints that widely explain our suboptimal agricultural productivity include limited usage of high-yielding seeds, insufficient application of fertilisers, inadequate water availability, ineffective extension services, and farmers’ poor access to agricultural credit. However, a relatively neglected area which has not so far received the required focus in the entire analysis is the human factor — poor knowledge, training, and efficiency of our farm workers, who carry out day-to-day operations on agricultural farms. The agriculture sector has been evolving and transforming itself continuously since Pakistan’s independence in 1947, but over the last two decades, many aspects of agricultural farming have changed drastically in many ways. Unfortunately, concerted efforts have so far not been made by the public or private sector to train farm workers in sync with evolving changes to bridge this productivity gap.