Türkiye to Support Pakistan’s Food Security

Millions of hectares of agricultural land were flooded and crops were severely damaged in the flood disaster this year in Pakistan due to the monsoon rains. Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) provided 60 tons of wheat seeds to approximately 700 small-scale farmers in the 8 most affected districts of Sindh province in order to contribute in reduction the threat to food security.

Nearly 30 million people were directly or indirectly affected by the flood disaster that occurred during and after the monsoon rains, which started in June and lasted till the mid of September, resulting in the highest precipitation rate in Pakistan's history. Hundreds of bridges and kilometers of roads became unusable, while more than 1.5 million houses were destroyed by the impact of the rains. In the flood disaster in which more than 1 million farm animals were killed, the lands where important agricultural products of Pakistan such as cotton and rice had been cultivated were flooded; and crops perished.

TİKA, in cooperation with Sindh Agricultural University, Tandojam and the Rural Agriculture Extension Department of Sindh Government, in order to contribute to the mitigation this emerging food security threat, has provided wheat seeds to small scale farmers in the most affected districts of Sindh province: Badin, Mirpurkhas, Umerkot, Matiari, Sanghar, Shaheed Banazirabad (Nawabshah), Dadu and Khairpur. A total of 1200 bags (60 tons) of wheat seeds, each of which was 50 kg, were distributed to nearly 700 flood affected small farmers.

The beneficiary farmers to whom wheat seeds were handed over in the distribution program held in Matiari expressed their satisfaction by saying, “We always heard about the friendship and brotherhood between Türkiye and Pakistan; but today we witnessed this friendship and brotherhood before us.” The farmers also thanked Türkiye and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for standing by them in challenging times during the flood.

Providing development support to developing countries with its agricultural projects carried out in more than 170 countries of the world, TİKA will continue to carry out development and cooperation projects that will strengthen relations with Pakistan, a friendly and brotherly country of Türkiye, through its two programme coordination offices in Islamabad and Karachi.