One of Al.Muqeet Lab’s flagship products is Greener,” with the strength to add happiness to the lives of farmers and policymakers by addressing soil-induced threats to food security.
Al-Muqeet Lab Private Limited is a Pakistani company that has been developing agricultural inputs for two decades. These inputs are based on natural ingredients and are designed to improve crop yields, quality, and sustainability.
Mature nations monitor opportunities and threats over a span of decades to initiate work on R&D with the inclusion of local dynamics for risk evasion. Pakistan needs to cater to the food, feed, and fibre requirements of 250 million citizens, 213 million animal heads, 901 million poultry birds, and a rapidly expanding aquaculture industry.
There is an additional stress on domestic supplies from the unaccounted cross-border trade of more than 3 million metric ton of grains to Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia. It’s easy to import and feed at the cost of rising inflation and a balance of payment deficit, which add misery to the lives of two-thirds of the population.
Threats to Pakistan are multi-faceted, including but not limited to policy, security, economy, energy, politics, rising population, food security, social issues, and a diversity of anti-state activities by domestic and international players.
Pakistan’s economy relies intensively on the performance of the agriculture sector to cater to domestic food and industrial sector requirements. This sector dominates foreign exchange earnings from the export of food and fibre crops, livestock, intermediate goods, and finished goods.
The recent pandemic of COVID-19, fast-depleting stocks of phosphate and potassium minerals, climate change, and a manifold increase in international transportation costs stressed the need to focus on indigenization plans for national stability.
These menaces can have a far-reaching impact on food security, human health and safety, poverty, and the livelihoods of the less developed (LD) and Emerging economies (EE) of Pakistan.
Therefore, we require a paradigm shift from current conventional technologies of inputs like fertilisers, synthetic pesticides, and soil conservation to environment-friendly, highly efficient, climate-resilient, soil health, and quality revival technologies with indigenization of R&D in the sector.
Al.Muqeet Lab Private Limited has launched agriculture inputs, an outcome of two decades of R&D in Pakistan, to strengthen food security and the agriculture economy, minimise the import bill of chemical fertilisers and insecticides, and conserve natural resources.
One of Al.Muqeet Lab’s flagship products is Greener,” with the strength to add happiness to the lives of farmers and policymakers by addressing soil-induced threats to food security.
“Greener” is a nano-technology product that is cost-effective, environment-friendly, a perfect replacement of gypsum to reclaim soil, rejuvenates sick soil, improves soil drainage, revives the biological life of soils, controls soil-borne plant diseases, improves the availability of nutrients fixed in soil, including phosphorous, secondary, and micro-nutrients, minimises the negative impact of high TDS water for irrigation, is a plant growth stimulant, enhances produce health, safety, and quality, and significantly conserves natural resources with an indigenous high-efficiency novel technology to replace more than a ton of gypsum with only 5–20 kg of “Greener” on an acre.
With the adoption of this novel technology, farmers can easily control the degradation of farm lands from the negative impacts of synthetic pesticides and other hazardous materials, salinity, and water logging to maximise farm productivity.
Of the current cropped area of 15.7 million hectares in Pakistan, more than 50 percent of farmlands productivity can be immediately enhanced by 10–50 percent with the application of the product “Greener”. It requires an investment of Rs 3000-6000 per acre on current cropped land, depending upon agro-ecological zones, type of soil, crop, and farmer willingness to apply fairly.
The cost of “Greener” on uncultivated, saline, and waterlogged soils can vary between Rs. 6,000 and Rs. 13,000 per acre. This cost is indicative of the product “Greener” only. Current land development and conservation practises of farmers are fine-tuned to maximise the benefits of this environmentally friendly technology.
Greener will help to conserve bio-diversity, reduce tillage requirements, reduce CO2 emissions, and catalyse a safe and secure food drive for all on our mother land. A doctrine of accepting domestic R&D-induced start-ups with innovative solutions for the agriculture sector is required.
Orchards and hardwood trees have faced a serious die-back problem on thousands of acres across Pakistan. “Greener” helped to save the orchards, native and invasive hard wood trees, of our cooperative farmers.
This product massively reduces the need for additional applications of synthetic fungicides to control soil-borne diseases in plants. An outcome for humanity is better health and safety for farm workers.
For additional information, contact almuqeetlab@gmail.com
This article is jointly authored by Asif M. Farrukh, The Director of Al.Muqeet Lab. Pvt. Ltd., and Dr. Syed Javaid Khurshid, The Technical Advisor, Al.Muqeet Lab. Pvt. Ltd.