Govt covers 8.8m hectares area under wheat sowing

ISLAMABAD: The government has covered 8.8 million hectares areas under wheat sowing for the year 2011 while last year it was 9.1 million hectares, showing a shortfall of 3.5 percent, sources talking with media on Wednesday.Officials in the Ministry of Food and Agriculture claimed that the reason to bring lower areas under wheat sowing is recent devastating floods in KP and Sindh. In Sindh, some of the areas were affected and were unable to be brought under wheat sowing. The sources said that Punjab covered 6.678 million hectares areas under wheat sowing against the target of 6.836 million hectares, Sindh covered 1.08 million hectares against the target of 1.031 million hectares, KP 0.725 million hectares against the target of 0.769 million hectares and Balochistan covered 0.232 million hectares against the target of 0.409 million hectares. The Federal Committee on Agriculture in its meeting on Nov 2010 has set wheat production target 25 million tonnes over sowing areas of 9.045 million hectares. The production target for provinces were set as Punjab 19.205 million tonnes, Sindh 3.682 million tons, KPK 1.210 million tonnes, and Balochistan 0.903 million tonnes – Dailytimes