Food Security through Animal Genetic Resource Conservation in Pakistan

Farm Animal Genetic Resources of Pakistan are playing a vital role to produce high quality animal protein for 180 million masses. With alarming situation of food security issues globally, Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable country to looming food security crises due to its huge and rapidly growing (2.4%) population. Multiple factors may be held responsible for unsatisfactory food security situation in Pakistan:

1.Currently Pakistan is producing 35 billion litres of milk from a colossal population of about 60 million cows and buffaloes. Pakistan is quoted to be the 5th largest milk producing country but this is being achieved at a heavy price by maintaining 5 million lactating animals as against technologically advanced countries like Germany has three times smaller cattle population, but German dairy animals are producing 5 times more milk per animal compared to Pakistan.

2.There is even grave situation in meat sector where per capita availability of animal protein recommended as a minimum limit to support normal health and growth, falls significantly shorter than required. Total meat production in the country is estimated to be 22 million tons from 90 million sheep and goat population however, still there is more than 50% gap for rural population for urban settlements it is more than 20%. Poultry sector has however, given a major support to slightly improve white meat supply by contributing approximately 25% to the total national meat production. This industry however, poses serious strain on already crippled economy by an order of 4 billion US$ worth of imports annually.

3.With an increasing trend of entrepreneurship and family efforts to achieve better social status, the life style of mainly urban as well as rural populations in Pakistan is shifting towards modernization. This is partly due to increased per capita income in 2012 (1256 US$) when compared to $ 450 in 1999. In fact many indigenous and global factors including socio-political situation are also becoming important indicators of social change in the country.

4.This dynamics is directly reflected in changing food habits and improving dining quality in Pakistani masses. This is increasing pressure on all stakeholders of dairy and livestock sector of Pakistan to produce more animal protein in the form of milk, meat and eggs for being prime dining products all over the world. There is a greater than ever need to strive for changing the approach from short term to long term and from horizontal expansion to vertical lift of our dairy and meat genetic resources by developing indigenous animal genetic resources for sustainable livestock production as against the mass scale importation of exotic genetics.

This may be a short term measure to fill the gap in supply demand of milk and meat products however, this does not present a longer term solution to food security issues rather poses potential threats to biodiversity of the area.

Already, we have witnessed this happening at mass scale through the importation of hybrid seeds in crop sciences. It has not only destroyed the local seed industry but has also completely changed the biodiversity picture of the country. The indigenous plants are becoming rare whereas the exotic seeds and plants with a new set of ecosystem implications are taking over.

Consequently we are paying a heavy price for higher per acre yield compared to local seeds, through the destruction of indigenous fauna and flora with indiscriminate use of insecticides, increased cost of production and new environmental challenges to face ahead. We can expect nothing different to what we have already witnessed in the case of hybrid seed and exotic poultry genetics, that we have not only lost our local plant and poultry genetic resources but we have become permanently dependent upon exotic seeds and grand parent flocks of poultry at such a mass scale that Pakistan’s economy can hardly afford it.

Neglecting Pakistan’s dairy and meat genetic resources may also result into a permanent deprivation from our soil born genotypes of cattle, buffalo sheep and goat which are not less than any superior dairy and meat breeds except for their inherent potential has not been challenged yet through concerted efforts. Another very fundamental issue is to identify exactly that what type of human resources are needed to address issues regarding national food security situation.

For the last 65 years Pakistan’s livestock sector has been predominantly oriented to produce veterinary health professionals with a little emphasis on enhancing productivity through feeding, breeding management and genetic improvement. There is an utter need that our efforts should be directed in the right direction so that already scarce resources should not be wasted as they have been since the inception of Pakistan.

Skilled human resource development in livestock production sciences seems to be only way forward to address this situation and to increase milk and meat production through scientifically controlling livestock populations and upgrading them for high milk and meat yield per animal by significantly reducing time to achieve this goal. This can only be possible by designing and implementing sound breeding programs at the national level to produce high yielding dairy and fast growing meat animals with is an essential part of the total animal production system. Traits of economic significance in livestock farming show continuous variation, thus the production capacity and physical appearance of livestock population can greatly be changed through judicious, planned and selective breeding.

With the advent of modern genetic and genomic technologies and 3rd generation genome analysis procedures, it has now become very much likely that both the reliability and time taken to significantly improve genetic worth of farm animals can be improved by predicting near to realistic breeding values of these animals for milk and meat production.