ABSTRACT
At present, 8.3 million farms are operating in Pakistan and a majority of them, that is, 90% are small farmers having land holdings less than 5 hectares. Small farmers are mostly caught up in the vicious circle of low productivity and poverty. To break this circle, a number of facilities/services must be provided to the farmers. These services include basic infrastructure, that is, roads from farm to market, electrification, education, health, telecommunications, land record management, credit provision, availability of better quality inputs accompanied by effective extension services, and soil and water testing laboratories. Farm mechanization services are also needed to perform farm operations timely. Along with the crop sector, livestock is the main component of the agrarian economy and it is performing at low levels due to lack of pure breeds, poor health, feed imbalances, and exploitative structures of livestock markets. Low farm productivity is due to the lack/gap in the provision of these services. This gap is in the form of inadequate, untimely, and substandard supplies of these services. For example, out of 45,000 villages in Pakistan, a sensible number is without metal roads, electrification, education, and health services. Despite the enormous increase in credit provision, only 13% of the farmers are availing that service. Fertilizer usage has increased manifold, but it is still far away from the recommended ratios for N:P:K. So it is the need of our time to accelerate and ensure the provision of all these facilities/services to each and every farmer. To those ends, Farmer's Services Centers (FSCs) could be established by the government or through private–public partnership.
