The livestock farming system in northern Pakistan comprises a huge resource base comprising cattle, sheep, goats, buffaloes and camel animals and poultry birds, in addition to wildlife. The animals are mostly reared in herds of sheep and goats in the remote rural areas or some dairy cattle and buffaloes in the urban and periurban areas. The farming families associated with such businesses belong to lower socio-economic backgrounds; hence their rich natural resource base is unable to provide them a graceful livelihood. In addition, the products coming out of such setups are not quality certified and lack any traceability towards a farming or processing centre following good livestock practices.
Role of the public sector organisations is at minimum level and rather hostile, in responding to such issues and even prestigious international organisations like FAO-UN fail to integrate good practices into mandates of these organisations. This is evident from the FAO KP Livestock Action Plan 2019 prepared by the author but prevented by the powerful stakeholders across the livestock value chain from being implemented.
Such farming families do possess qualified kids, usually with graduate level education, However, the young generation are afraid and fed-up with the issues and challenges in the farming and products processing setups. Matching grants may be provided to such farming and products processing families, especially thier educated kids, to establish their viable entrepreneurship models, linked with technical, quality control and marketing bodies.
Prof. Muhammad Subhan Qureshi