God has bestowed on Pakistan four seasons, agricultural lands, a very large area of which remains uncultivated, rivers, glaciers, rains and agricultural manpower. Yet it is a pity that we have not been able to increase the land under the plough even by 5 % since emergence of Pakistan. Uncultivated lands are being used more for political purpose by ceremonial allotments in public gatherings by the leader of the party in power which eventually goes back to the feudal lords who control the voters. After all why these lands have not been brought under the plough for the last half a century, we would not have to import food grains and save a large chunk of foreign exchange which could be used for nation building imports.

We started with the right foot forward but through efflux of time and corruption in the rank and file of our own people we have landed in the position of a beggar with a bowl in his hands asking for donations and loans from all over the world, some time even at the cost of our sovereignty which we achieved through Unity, Faith & Discipline. The agriculture policy has to be reshaped irrespective of political or administrative expediency; it has to be ensured that the land belongs to the tiller of the soil. Cosmetic efforts have been made and are being made to increase agricultural production and for this purpose an Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP) has also been established by the government, yet the beneficiaries are not the tillers of the soil but the big feudal lords who spend this easy gained money in luxurious life style in big cities and abroad. Not only this, there are many other avenues of corruption in this vital sector of national economy.

There is a Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) to boot, what is the position of this august body, even its chairman and staff working in it would not know, they work 9 to 5 daily to only draw their salary and perks. As politicians would have it, there were three Cabinet Ministers for agriculture at a time, one of who was Incharge of PARC.

Effective Micro-Organic Technology (EMT) is yet another example of our governments in-efficiency and callousness in bringing the fruits of advance modern technology to the people of Pakistan for reasons best known to them. Dr. Teruo Higa, a Professor at Ryukus University, Okinawa, Japan, has invented an Effective Micro-organism Technology ( EMT ) is a single culture inoculates, EMT uses a combination of micro organic cultures, since the key to sustainable agriculture is soil quality, microbiologists have tried to culture soil inoculates, essentially beneficial micro-organism, to enhance the immunity of the soil against disease causing organisms (Pathogens) such as bacteria, fungi and nematodes, which way back in 1982 was developed and designed to overcome the shortcomings of single culture inoculates. Professor Higa's research found that EMT can coexist in mixed cultures, when used together, the advantages of EMT are greater than the sum of their individual positive effects.

Dr. Terou Higa, the inventor of this technology was invited to Pakistan to give a discourse on his invention, the doctor did it very effectively as its trial and testing had received 100% successful results in Pakistan recently. The Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf was very much impressed and decided to import and later promote to develop this technology in Pakistan to save colossal waste of foreign exchange from imports of expensive fertilizer and pesticides. The curse of red tape in bureaucracy down below over took the General's desire, so much so that the matter is still in square one, various importers of fertilizers and pesticide etc. etc., got alarmed at this possible success of Dr. Higa's EMT which would push them to bankruptcy in Pakistan, so representatives of large corporations and multi-national corporations see it as being against their vested interest and with the bureaucracy hand in glove with them they are out to sabotage the Generals move.

In his latest article " The dictates of nature." Published in Frontier Post of 19th May 2000, Dr. Zafar Altaf, the present Federal Secretary for Agriculture has very conveniently laid the blame for the dictates of nature on his predecessor. True, the dictates of nature can be forecasted and effective measures can be taken and could be taken before the clammily actually over took the people and this is in my humble opinion the purpose of the PARC which is yet another avenue of employment and nothing else. Dr. Zafar Altaf is himself in the Ministry of Agriculture for the last so many years and has been intimately connected with Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, he is requested to throw some light and some good job that PARC has done, at least during his tenure. Let us not forget that he is the Secretary Agriculture even today.

Any ambitious plan has always been at the mercy of the corrupt functionaries of the government who are always hand in glove with the contractors doing the job, as in the link canals after the signing of the Indus Basin Treaty, our engineers failed to conceive the requirement or deliberately acted in connivance with the foreign consultants that no protective lining were installed to protect these canals from seepage and to save 50% loss of water through seepage which could not be retrieved also in order to give a second chance to the profiteers on the jobs. Contaminated import of seed and fertilizer is yet another source of corruption and destruction in our agriculture sector. This led to the spread of infectious virus and fungus in our crops and opened the avenue to the blue eyed agents to further import substandard pesticides in large quantities, yet another source of windfall profit making and sharing with the government functionaries.

It was in order to avoid all this source of corruption and substandard working, that General Pervez Musharraf hit upon a plan of introducing effective micro-organism technology developed by Dr. Higa in Japan and the results of which have been accepted all over the world, this technology is being used in more than 55 countries of the world including Japan, China, Thailand, Brazil and USA.

Readers may be interested to know what is EMT. An appropriate place to start would be the two dynamic and opposing forces existing within nature. In the broadest term the forces of regeneration and degeneration. The force of regeneration endows all things with life and vitality, which supports and maintains wholeness, soundness and good health. It is productive, beneficial and vital and is called the force of life. The opposite of this is degeneration, which is destructive; it engenders breakdown, instigates and advances decay and decomposition, causing sickness and disease and ultimately death. It is counter-productive and pathogenic.

The term effective microorganism (EM) to denote the large group of microorganisms responsible for the regenerative process. Photosynthetic bacteria, yeast's, lactic bacteria and fungi are just some of the strains of microorganism belonging to the EM group. EM is a liquid concentrate produced from the cultivation of over 80 varieties of microorganisms, their activity instigates the regeneration process, purifying the air and water contents of soil and intensifying plant growth. The plant growth tends to be poor, producing only weak, sickly plants afflicted with severe pest infestation, making growth of any kind virtually impossible without chemicals and fertilizers. Yet even on the face of such extreme conditions and the problems resulting from them, EMT is able to turn things around completely to rapidly transform the poor soil into one which supports life. Another positive feature of these microorganisms is that their secretions contain large amounts of nutrients beneficial to both plants and animals including amino acid, organic acids, polysaccharides and vitamins. This is why the application of EMT in agriculture not only does away with the need for agricultural chemicals and artificial fertilizers, but achieves better results in every way.

EMT application in agriculture sector enhances productivity with quality and drastically reduces the input cost which can be seen that today a DAP Fertilizer bag costs Rs. 600/- or so plus cost of pesticides, the EMT costs only Rs. 15/- to 18/- per gallon. What a big difference in input costs and gain in three times of output and quality. EMT's benefits are manifold. Not only is it designed to flourish under a diverse range of conditions, EMT also facilitates the decomposition of organic matter, nutrients, reduces oxidised substances and of course suppresses soil-borne pathogens and pests. It also enhances the photosynthetic capacity of plant flowering, fruiting and ripening. And unlike ordinary composting processes, which lose energy as heat, nutrients as gases and produce harmful by-products, EMT fermentation occurs at lower temperatures, producing nutrients such as water-soluble carbohydrates, amino acids and vitamins with minimal wastage. These effects not only result in increased food production, estimated at being nearly one-third more than crop yields from conventional farming by EMT's proponents, but also virtually eliminate the need for chemical fertilizer and pesticides. Furthermore EMT has been shown to be useful in livestock production and animal husbandry by sanitation in the living environment of animals and thereby improving their health. It is also useful in fish and shrimp culture because it enhances the water quality.

More over when it comes to Pakistan a number of potential problems must be addressed also. Pakistan has four seasons fluctuating from very hot to very cold, from dry to very humid, the philosophy of EMT is based on the input of living organism and hence is naturally sensitive to environmental factors such as temperature, light, humidity. Another area is the level of literacy and education of our farmers or rather lack thereof, which has led to the haphazard and indiscriminate application of toxic chemicals, over the last half a century cosmetic efforts have been done in the so-called adult literacy programme resulting in almost complete disaster in agriculture sector, the role of educating the farmers was assumed by the private sector fertilizer and pesticide companies. Today these companies have total monopoly over all educational materials being supplied to mislead the agriculturist for the profiteering and corruption of these multi-national companies and their agents. Therefore it will be the last thing to that these companies and their agents would allow to promote EM Technology that would reduce the farmers reliance on their fertilizer and pesticide products. So, EMT can only work in Pakistan if the government develops a comprehensive, serious and sustained training programme for farmers itself bereft from all expediencies.

As there are three areas of their operation namely, Agriculture, Health and Environment, the EMT works wonders in health sector also and is most effective drink to stop the process of degeneration in human body also. My mother has been using this health friendly EMT drink for last two months which was found to be quite effective and when I went for the purchase of second bottle for my ailing mother I am now told that it is no more available in Pakistan because the high import custom duty imposed on this product, this drinks strong medicinal value and is used to stop degeneration of anything in human system and puts it back to normal life and vitality. It is a pity that corruption always steals a march over our national requirements.

Because of strong principle and commitment of Dr. Higa, that whatever exists in nature, or is to be found in the world around us, should be the common property of every man, woman and child on this planet, for this he engages in negotiation directly with the governments or recognised foundations, because he feels that his invention should not become a source of profit for any single corporation or business enterprise, at the moment this technology is in use in 55 countries and being manufactured in 15 countries of the world including Japan, China, Thailand and USA

It is because of this that the cost of these products will be very low compared to any product launched by any multinational company in Pakistan because their first step to make hey while sun shines is by transfer pricing, the vested interest have joined hands with the government functionaries to sabotage the successful experiments done in Pakistan Agricultural University Faisalabad, and thereby General Pervez Musharraf's programme as well. Will the Chief Executive Secretariat take a note of this alarming situation and appraise the Chief Executive about it.

Karachi. May 23rd, 2000.