Türkiye helps Pakistan mitigate food security challenges
TÜRKİYE’S government-run relief organization is helping Pakistani farmers affected by floods to lessen a looming threat to food security brought on by recent extreme floods and rains that submerged millions of acres of croplands around the South Asian nation.
In order to help the thousands of farmers in the severely damaged provinces of southern Sindh and southwest Balochistan, the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) has started a program to distribute wheat seeds to farmers.
The primary winter crop in Pakistan is wheat, which provides a significant portion of the country’s farmers with a living. According to TİKA Karachi Coordinator Halil Ibrahim Başaran, the organization has so far provided 60 tons of wheat seeds to 700 small-scale farmers in Sindh’s eight worstaffected districts, namely Badin, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot, Matiari, Sanghar, Nawabshah, Dadu and Khairpur.
According to a statement released by TİKA on Friday, the organization held its most recent ceremony in the Matiari district to distribute wheat seeds to more than 100 farmers in partnership with the Sindh Agricultural University in Tandojam, Hyderabad district, and the Rural Agriculture Extension Department in Sindh.
At the ceremony, Başaran stated that the program is intended to help small-scale farmers who have experienced significant loss in terms of ready-to-harvest crops and cash as a result of intense flooding and storms.
He added that now that the floodwaters have subsided, the main needs of the numerous farmers in the flood-affected areas are seeds and fertilizers.
“We always heard about the friendship and brotherhood between Türkiye and Pakistan, but today we have witnessed it,” said Ghulam Mustafa, one of the program’s beneficiaries, thanking Türkiye for its support.
On the orders of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Türkiye has so far delivered some 15 flights and 13 “Kindness Trains” full of relief supplies, including tents, boats, food items, medications, vaccines and other supplies.
Three tent cities have also been established by Türkiye’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) in Sindh’s Dadu, Hyderabad and Noshero Feroz districts to house approximately 3,000 flood victims temporarily.
A third of Pakistan was submerged by the torrential monsoon that started in midJune and lasted until late September, washing away hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, bridges and animals, in addition to killing over 1,700 people.
The devastating floods have cost the already troubled nation’s economy $30 billion in losses, primarily in infrastructure and agriculture.