Pakistan’s annual requirement of edible oil is about five million tons (MT) with approximately 16kg per capita use and most of its chunk is imported from Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2006 edible oil’s import bill was only US$ 615 million that jumped to US$ 3.8 billion in 2022 with the country presently producing around six MT. If edible oil prices increase by five percent annually, the country’s imports would further jump. In this situation, sunflower, olive, canola and other products would go beyond common man’s reach.
Despite ecological diversity, suitable climate and vast fertile land, Pakistan is unfortunately among the lowest edible oil producing countries. Having only 20 percent domestic production of the total requirement, the country spends approximately US$ 4 billion annually on import of edible oil to meet the pressing demand of its around 220 million population. Respective governments and policy makers could not fully benefit from over 4.4 million hectares fertile land suitable for cultivation of olive, sunflower, soybean, corn, canola and other oils.
Spain was producing about 45 percent of world’s total edible oil by utilizing 2.6 million hectare land. On the contrary, Pakistan despite having vast tracts of fertile land, was importing around 80 percent of the required commodity. It is welcoming that in recent years, the government realized this challenge and focused to fully utilize olive potential land in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Merged Areas, Balochistan, Punjab, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan through substantial plantation of edible oil plants and declared several areas as Olive Valleys.
About 100,000 and 300,000 hectare land in Azad Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan is now being used for sunflower and canola cultivation respectively. Besides introducing edible oil policy and training of farmers, a five-year mega project ‘Enhancement of Productivity of Oil Seeds’ was launched in 2019-20 to promote edible oil farming. The first olive promotion project worth Rs 3.82 billion funded by the Government of Italy was launched on June 1, 2012 to cultivate oil seeds on over 1,500 hectare land.
The project was handed over to Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) on February 12, 2012 and completed on June 30, 2015. To capitalize on this project, the Pakistan government launched ‘Promotion of Olive Trees Cultivation on Commercial Scale (POTCCS)’ project worth Rs 3.2 billion in 2015 for increasing production of edible oil. Thousands of olive grafting trees mostly of Italian variety planted under POTCCS could be seen on the mountains of Talash in Lower Dir, on way to Chitral. The fertile land is mostly preferred for sunflowers’ cultivation as it required less water than others. Sunflower is a cost-efficient crop with three months tenure. Farmers can easily earn Rs 200,000 to Rs 250,000 from one acre sunflower as compared to Rs 130,000 to Rs 150,000 from one acre olive. Progressive farmers had started shifting to commercial cultivation of edible oil crops in Pakistan. At present eight to ten varieties are under cultivation while research on around 50 more varieties was underway to ascertain their weather adaptability and climate change resistance.
A four-year ‘Edible Oil Seeds’ PSDP project has also been launched across the country with 50% shared financing by Federal and Provincial Governments. Around 70 million wild olive plants are discovered in merged tribal districts and in Malakand, Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Karak, Nowshera, Hangu and Chitral districts.
It means, these areas are suitable for olive cultivation. Over 1.2 million olive plants on 1,300 hectares are planted in KP and each tree produces three kilogram oil and olive tree starts production in five years and continues with it till decades. A farmer can earn Rs 450,000 from 1,500 kg olive.
