Typical agriculture sectors like animal production and processing, aquaculture and its processing, and fruit and vegetable processing, can be water-intensive and generate complex and sometimes severe pollution.
Identi-fying the factors that have greatly undermined Pakistan's potential as a major milk-producing country, a research suggests a thorough review of the laws empowering government to regulate milk prices. It argues that milk prices in the country are determined without taking into account rates of the essential inputs for dairy production.
Provincial Minister for Livestock Haji Hidayatullah has said that special attention would be given to the livestock and diary development in the province. Speaking at a gathering of party workers here on Sunday, the minister said that the livestock sector had been neglected by the successive governments. Every possible step would be taken to make this sector profit-earning for the farmers, he added. Earlier, Mr Hidayatullah was accorded a warm welcome by the ANP workers on his first visit to his home district.
The US Midwest has enjoyed nearly 20 years without a major drought but forecasters worry the corn belt's luck could dry up this year, further squeezing tight global supplies amid soaring food prices. With its last major drought in 1988, the Midwest has reached its average span of 18.6 years between droughts. Considering that statistic and current weather conditions, Iowa State University extension climatologist Elwynn Taylor said the corn belt has a one in three chance of drought this year. "We do have to be prepared," Taylor said. "A 33 percent chance is high, that's a risk."
Livestock auctions are not normally the stuff of headlines, but then it's not every day that cows as unusual as Dundee Paradise and Dundee Paratrooper are going under the hammer. The dairy cows were due to be sold at Easter Compton cattle market near Bristol, UK, last month, but at the last minute their owner withdrew them, reportedly unsettled by negative media coverage and local opposition. The problem? The cows' mother was a clone, conceived in a laboratory from a cell taken from the ear of a prize-winning Holstein in Wisconsin.
Australian veterinary experts were keen to conduct research into animal diseases in Pakistan under an agreement recently signed between Pakistan and Australia for the development of dairy technology and exchange of experts, said Dr David N.C. Gill on Thursday. Dr David, who is a member of the Australian team, which is on a study tour of Tandojam Central Veterinary Laboratory, said that they had detected many diseases in the livestock of the province and found it necessary to conduct research into the diseases.
'Developed countries in the comity of nations are looking for new galaxies in solar system while here a search is going on for water, flour, sometimes electricity and security. Punjab Chief Minister Dost Muhammad Khosa averred this while inaugurating the inaugural session of International Livestock and Poultry Congress here on Tuesday.
The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh indicated during last July's G-8 Summit in St Petersburg that he wanted to force the pace of Indo-Russian cooperation. The PM remarked that, "The economic pillar of our strategic relationship needs attention, as at present it is not as strong as it should be.' He, and others, have also noted that both economies have been logging up good rates of growth, something that could lay the foundation for more substantive economic cooperation between the two.
The provincial directorate of Animal Husbandry has advised livestock owners and farmers to get their animals vaccinated against black quarter, foot-and-mouth, enterotoxemia and sheep pox diseases that usually surface during April and June. Talking about the risks of the diseases, Dr Hafeez Shaikh, in-charge of the Government Veterinary Hospital, Landhi, told Dawn that all the four diseases were quite common and posed serious threats to the animals' health, at times resulting in a low milk production.
When urbanization spreads its wings, villagers thus overshadowed find it difficult to get their heads around developments. A recent incident, where a group of farmers from south Thimphu met to discuss the Thimphu city corporation's rule, which bans rearing livestock in the capital city's jurisdiction, bears witness to the growing conflict between planners and farmers. On Monday, after a farmer from Tshalimarphey found her two missing cows in the, as she put it, "central jail for cattle' in lower Mothithang, farmers appealed to the city to bend the rule.
The responsibilities of agriculture scientists and researchers have been underlined to cope with the present flour crises. It is the need of the hour to design a multi-dimensional strategy to over come the crisis with solid mechanism for obtaining maximum yield potential of agricultural and livestock products.
