Pakistan

Australia’s development strategy for Pakistan is to work with the Pakistan Government towards a stable, secure, democratic country through broad-based social and economic development and poverty reduction in line with the MDGs. Australia’s program in Pakistan will be guided by the Australia–Pakistan Development Partnership. The program is based on four pillars:

• enhancing basic service delivery in health and education


• increasing agricultural productivity and improving rural livelihoods


• strengthening democratic governance


• supporting vulnerable populations through humanitarian assistance.

The second pillar of this strategy is detailed in the Australia–Pakistan Agricultural and Rural Development Strategy (APARDS). ACIAR collaborates closely with AusAID in the implementation of APARDS, notably in relation to the Australia–Pakistan Agriculture Sector Linkages Program (ASLP), which ACIAR is managing on behalf of AusAID.
Pakistan is a strategically important country, where the development challenges are considerable and were exacerbated by the unprecedented flood of 2010. Increasing pressure on availability of water resources for irrigation exists due to competing demands for urban and industrial uses. Poor irrigation management practices combined with poor drainage and soil management have resulted in significant salinity. High-value horticultural crops such as citrus and mangoes for both domestic and export markets are an important source of farm income; however, crop management practices are often suboptimal and losses along the value chain are high. Pakistan is also one of the world’s largest milk producers, with slightly less than half of that production from dairy cattle. Unit animal production is very low although genetic potential is quite good.

ACIAR’s strategy for Pakistan is to work closely with the Pakistan Government, AusAID, other donor partners, NGOs and the Pakistani private sector to provide R&D and technical capacity building, technical support and carefully targeted R&D interventions to underpin Pakistan development programs. Poverty reduction, linking smallholders to markets, and gender equality are major issues for development programs in Pakistan, and are a key consideration for the ACIAR strategy. Australia is well placed to assist Pakistan in addressing irrigation, drainage and salinity management in major cropping systems, and this is an important focus of the program. ACIAR’s work in dairy and horticulture in Pakistan revolves around the ASLP. A second phase of the ASLP is due to commence in early 2011, with the overall goal of collaboration to improve livelihood systems for the rural poor in Pakistan. The main objectives of ASLP 2 are to:

• foster value chains through commissioned R&D projects that enhance selected chains and benefit the rural poor through market and employment opportunities, addressing both technical and social issues to foster suitable outcomes


• enhance agricultural capability through ‘smart linkages’ and structured training that is responsive and catalytic, and complements the key initiatives supported under pro-poor value chains and other work


• encourage facilitation of well-grounded policy, codes of practice, or other operational frameworks or regulatory mechanisms that will ‘enable’ pro-poor value chains and more sustainable farming systems.

The ASLP extension will initially concentrate on the mango, citrus and dairy sectors, but with a greater focus on: gaining benefit for small and poor farmers and other disadvantaged groups; greater involvement of women; dissemination of results; and maximising project impacts. Flexibility will be built into the ASLP extension so that it can provide a mechanism for addressing additional sectors as well as agricultural R&D issues and enhanced capacity building.

Pakistan does not currently have a formal rural development strategy—the ACIAR strategy is based on informal consultation with Pakistan government agencies and other stakeholders. The most recent formal consultations were held in November 2008 during the review of the ASLP, which confirmed the importance of continuing research on dairy and efficient mango and citrus value chains. All continuing projects in Pakistan will include significant components of capacity building in participatory research and extension methodologies.

Key areas identified as research priorities across the medium term include:

Developing more productive and competitive mango and citrus production and marketing systems

• Development, adaptation and adoption of integrated and sustainable management practices for horticultural and food sectors


• Analysis of strategic supply and value chains, and implementation of interventions to improve the efficiencies of these

Improving livelihoods of dairy farmers

• Development of more-effective strategies for reducing risk and improving returns from smallholder dairy systems


• Development of improved dairy extension approaches

Management of land and water resources to sustain productive enterprises

• Resource assessment and the development and implementation of sustainable management plans, with an emphasis on community engagement and increased community-level co-management


• Development, adaptation and adoption of irrigation, drainage and salinity management programs for major cropping systems

Addressing policy, social and capacity constraints and issues

• Interventions to overcome cross-cutting economic, social and capacity constraints to smallholder household profitability/productivity


• Analysis of income utilisation, microfinance access, current production and marketing systems impacts on smallholder families, particularly with respect to equity, the role and effectiveness of women, and poor and other disadvantaged groups.