FAISALABAD: Pro-chancellor Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) Syed Babar Ali has said that agriculture a huge potential to absorb thousands of young professionals in the emerging businesses starting right from farmgate to the dining table of consumers.
Syed Babar Ali, Pro-chancellor Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) was speaking at a special session on agribusiness opportunities in Pakistan and a roundtable session at UAF here the other day . Syed Babar Ali urged the girl students to remain with the profession even after graduation and marriage and also sell their brains to explore new business and entrepreneurial ideas to pay back the investment made by their family and society at large.
He underscored the need for promoting faculty and student exchange programme with other agricultural universities. He asked the University management to encourage the younger faulty for higher studies abroad and also set up a debriefing bureau to get share the foreign and local exposure that they had during their foreign visit.
He asked the students to keep thinking about various steps of agricultural supply and value chain and identify the issues to be taken care of, to become entrepreneurial in that respect. Syed Babar Ali urged the University management to arrange interaction of meritorious and promising farmers with the faculty and students at campus to get them inspired. The business tycoon urged the experts to evolve a demand driven strategy to meet the challenges in their respective domain. Vice Chancellor UAF Dr. Iqrar said that UAF scientists had gathered 500 indigenous mango germplasms and data analysis and further characterization they introduced 10 verities of enormous yield potential and longer shelf life. He said that UAF team was closing working with LUMS people to examine the genes expressions so as to identify and slow down those genes responsible for fast respiration to enhance its self life.
He said two major interventions were coming in the university one is of USAID CAS with $30 million and other is Chinese Confucius Language Centre with plenty of scholarship opportunities. He said the UAF was sending its students to India enable them to inspect explore new business ideas. He said that young researchers need to work on potato, fodder and citrus. He said there was enormous potential of new agribusiness if the students keep thinking and asking questions about the sector. Capt ® Arif Nadeem Former Secretary Agriculture and CEO Pakistan Agricultural Collation said that he can bring number of farmers and entrepreneurs who proved their metal in production, marketing and supply and value change improvement. He said that new BBA Agribusiness degree program was a step towards equipping the youth with necessary information relevant to market. Former Secretary Agriculture Captain ® Arif Nadeem, Dr. Kauser Abdullah Malik, Dr. Zahoor Hassan, UAF VC Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan, Fazal Jawad, Asif Ali Shah, Dr. Aziz Mithani, Faisal Farid, Mriza Nadeem and others spoke on the occasion.
