Potential of the Agricultural Value Chain Improvement in Pakistan

This paper analyzes the status of Pakistan’s agriculture in the world and quantifies the potential of improving productivity and quality of value chain at its different nodes. A great potential of expansion in the value chain of large number of agricultural commodities produced in Pakistan are observed. Just bringing the average crop yield levels at par to the world average yield can generate over US$11 billion additional revenues to the producers. Despite lower yield, majority of commodities have lower prices compared to the world average prices at the farmgate. However, the country lost its comparative advantage as its export-output ratios (EOR) and export prices are lower than the world average for a large number of commodities. Similarly the quality of the produce in domestic market is observed to be low. If Pakistan can improve its EOR and export prices to the world average levels and enhance the quality of 10% its agriculture output in domestic market to the average export quality, it can generate US$8.8 to various stakeholders in the value chain. Cluster-based development approach is suggested to harness the potential in agricultural value chain. Various measures are suggested to improve productivity and quality of agricultural value chain in Pakistan