LAHORE - Provincial Agriculture Minister, Nauman Ahmad Langrial has said it is need of the hour to promote the cultivation of oil producing commodities/oilseed crops as Pakistan imports edible oil worth Rs 3 billion every year. He said this while presiding over a consultative meeting of all stakeholders held at the Agriculture House to review the promotion of sunflower cultivation and its sowing target. The minister said, "Sunflower crop gets prepared in 90 to 110 days and farmers can earn good profit from its cultivation in less time". It was very necessary to provide high quality seeds to growers so that they could obtain maximum yield, he maintained. The agriculture minister said that this year for the cultivation of sunflower government had decided to give a subsidy of Rs 5,000 on per acre of land. Punjab Agriculture Secretary Wasif Khursheed told the meeting that this year in Punjab sunflower would be cultivated on 250,000 acres of land and all possible steps would be taken to achieve the set target.

An awareness campaign was also being started for the sunflower growers, he added.