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Since its inception, Pakistan is experiencing rapid growth in human
population despite tremendous efforts to check population explosion. Over
the years the population density had been increasing, land to man ratio
deteriorating, and the food and cloth requirements intensifying.
On the contrary, the scope for increase in cultivated area over the years
has always been marginal. Therefore, the expectations of a wide gap between
future food requirements and supplies are high which may possibly be reduced
by improving average yields by intensive use of agricultural machinery. It
is obvious that use of agricultural machinery not only speed up cultivation
process but also accelerate harvesting and threshing operations. It is also
instrumental to maximization of agricultural production by increasing land
use and cropping intensities. Therefore, planning for judicious use of
Agricultural Machinery is of utmost importance which, inter alia, depends
upon availability of reliable and timely statistics.
The use of Agricultural Machinery is increasing day by day in Pakistan like
other agricultural countries of the world which has necessitated periodic
stocktaking of Agricultural Machinery as a regular activity. Realizing this
fact in Pakistan, the first Agricultural Machinery Census was conducted in
1968, second in 1975, third in 1984 and fourth in 1994.
The current Agricultural Machinery Census is fifth in succession and was
conducted in 2004. It has an edge over the previous censuses on account of
the fact that it has also attempted to cover bulldozers, combine harvesters,
wells with pump, submercible pumps, modern irrigation systems (MISs) and a
large number of farm implements for the first time. Salient objectives of
this census are as under:
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- To generate estimates of number of tractors, bulldozers, combine
harvesters, tractor drawn and other farm implements.
- To develop statistics on tractors by make, model, power and working
condition.
- To provide the number of tube wells / wells with pump / lift pumps /
submercible pumps by type of motive power
- To ascertain information on the privately owned tube wells / wells with
pump / lift pumps / submercible pumps by type of ownership, year of
installation, their suction and delivery capacity.
- To reckon the households owning tractors and tube wells by type and source of
finance.
- To provide data about the extent and type of use of agricultural machines on
own farms and the practice of renting out tractor time and tube well water.
- To gauge the number of privately owned modern irrigation systems (MISs) i.e.
sprinkler and trickle / drip irrigation systems.
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