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Khalid Wattoo on Muck Rack

Khalid Wattoo

(He/Him)
  • Development Professional, Farmer, and Journalist, Freelance
Pakistan
As seen in: Dawn, EIN News, Asia News Network (ANN), Agriculture Newswire
Covers:  Agriculture, Agricultural businesses, Economy, food security, climate change, agricultural value chains
Doesn't Cover: Politics, Sports

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Khalid Wattoo’s Biography

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Khalid Wattoo is a journalist and development professional with more than 25 years’ experience of long-term and short-term assignments with the United Nations (ILO, ITC), World Bank, European Union, USAID, USDA, and DFID-funded projects aimed at agricultural development, value chain development, SMEs development, and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) at policy and practice level.

For the last three years, he has been writing for DAWN -- the largest English daily newspaper …

Khalid Wattoo’s Journalist Portfolio

A viable solution

A viable solution

Keeping a record of vegetables sown and preventing oversupplying may be a more effective way to ensure fair p…

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A viable solution

A viable solution

Keeping a record of vegetables sown and preventing oversupplying may be a more effective way to ensure fair p…

View article →

Articles

Agriculture: A failing agricultural export model

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By Khalid Wattoo, Waqar Ahmad
| Dawn Verified
Pakistan’s trade statistics at the close of FY26 reveal a worrying trend. Despite being an agrarian economy, the country’s trade deficit in food products has increased significantly. Food exports declined by 29.5 per cent, falling from $7.1bn in FY25 to $5.02bn in FY26, while food imports increased by 12pc, rising from $8.2bn to $9.15bn. Nearly all of Pakistan’s major food exports — including rice, fruits, vegetables, maize, and sesame —registered a decline during FY26.
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Tackling agri’s challenges

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By Khalid Wattoo, Chaudhary Muhammad Ashraff
| Dawn Verified
The Punjab government has recently approved a pilot project for the Lahore, Gujranwala, and Gujrat divisions, with an allocation of Rs730 million under the Annual Development Programme. The project’s core intervention is the construction of groundwater recharge boreholes on farmers’ fields under a costsharing arrangement. This project has been widely welcomed by farmers, unlike many headline- grabbing initiatives that rarely address the structural constraints facing Punjab’s agriculture sector.
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Mangoes in distress

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By Waqar Ahmad, Khalid Wattoo
| Dawn Verified
Mango — Pakistan’s national fruit and widely regarded as the king of fruits —is the latest addition to a growing list of horticultural crops that have caused financial losses for farmers over the past year, largely due to two factors. The first is the reduction in fruit and vegetable exports caused by geopolitical developments in the region, particularly the prolonged closure of the Pakistan–Afghanistan border.
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