Wheat Farmers Can Permanently Shift to Olive Business And Become Millionaires
新闻台署名 来源：新华社、《黎明报》、《阿拉伯新闻》、阿纳多卢通讯社与《分钟镜报》。由 GSRRA 编辑部翻译并节选。
The ongoing wheat crisis in Pakistan isn’t something new and needs a quick fix. With the world’s top growers in Palestine facing genocide, the global olive trade has dropped considerably in the Middle East, and importers are shifting to top sellers in Spain, Italy, and Greece for the evergreen item.
Farmers in Pakistan can take a giant leap of faith and permanently shift to olive cultivation instead of wheat, since the federal government has year after year largely avoided local procurement in favor of importing the essential item.
It was only 3 years ago that Pakistan exported olive oil worth $2 million. But since then, the market has been neglected and we ended up spending $4.5 billion per year on edible oil imports. We should invest in olive cultivation and get into the oil business, as our lands are perfect for it.
According to revised estimates, Pakistan has so far managed to grow over 8 million olive trees. There are great climate conditions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Balochistan and Punjab. A few privy to this line of business told ProPakistani that there is at least 10 million acres of ready-for-sowing land to start olive farming in Punjab alone.
Wheat, maize, rice, sugarcane, and cotton make up the major components of agricultural production for Pakistan. In recent years, due to hikes in prices of essential commodities like pulses, onions, potatoes, chilies, and tomatoes, crops have gained substantial economic importance. The biggest test for our farmers in recent history is how to bypass the government’s wheat boycott in favor of imports.
Growing olive trees in Pakistan will not just improve the economy, but it will also mitigate climate change significantly.
Through an initiative in 2016, farmers in Punjab’s Potohar region grew 1 million olive trees on 8,000 acres. 750 farmers worked on the program and the olive produce offered a marginal cutback on olive oil imports, which had reached $2 billion per year at the time.
Last year, the Punjab government decided to grow around 50 million olive trees on 10 million acres of land by 2026. The outlook for olive farming in Pakistan is very promising, especially for wheat farmers who are being mistreated by the government these days.
If farmers take this leap, there’s a high chance most of them will get rich sooner. The only setback is that the waiting period is 3-5 years, while some rare varieties take at least 10-12 years to mature. However, the results will be huge. Olive trees produce fruit for decades and will make even a small-scale farmer very rich.
The wheat business is tricky for local farmers as the state prefers imported wheat. Let’s give olives a chance. A pretty big one.
Zamir Ahmed Awan is the founder and Chair of the Global Silk Route Research Alliance, a think tank in Islamabad. He studied engineering at Shanghai University in the 1980s, and years later he went back to China as Pakistan's science counsellor in Beijing, from 2010 until 2016, working on science and higher education cooperation between the two countries.…
