Brazilian Agriculture: The Miracle of the Cerrado

[mikhurram]

Below is the original text and link of a very interesting article which appeared on Economist Magazine on Aug 26, 2010.

http://www.economist.com/node/16886442? ... 2&fsrc=rss

The miracle of the cerrado

Brazil has revolutionised its own farms. Can it do the same for others?

Aug 26th 2010

IN a remote corner of Bahia state, in north-eastern Brazil, a vast new farm is springing out of the dry bush. Thirty years ago eucalyptus and pine were planted in this part of the cerrado (Brazil’s savannah). Native shrubs later reclaimed some of it. Now every field tells the story of a transformation. Some have been cut to a litter of tree stumps and scrub; on others, charcoal-makers have moved in to reduce the rootballs to fuel; next, other fields have been levelled and prepared with lime and fertiliser; and some have already been turned into white oceans of cotton. Next season this farm at Jatobá will plant and harvest cotton, soyabeans and maize on 24,000 hectares, 200 times the size of an average farm in Iowa. It will transform a poverty-stricken part of Brazil’s backlands.

Three hundred miles north, in the state of Piauí, the transformation is already complete. Three years ago the Cremaq farm was a failed experiment in growing cashews. Its barns were falling down and the scrub was reasserting its grip. Now the farm—which, like Jatobá, is owned by BrasilAgro, a company that buys and modernises neglected fields—uses radio transmitters to keep track of the weather; runs SAP software; employs 300 people under a gaúcho from southern Brazil; has 200km (124 miles) of new roads criss-crossing the fields; and, at harvest time, resounds to the thunder of lorries which, day and night, carry maize and soya to distant ports. That all this is happening in Piauí—the Timbuktu of Brazil, a remote, somewhat lawless area where the nearest health clinic is half a day’s journey away and most people live off state welfare payments—is nothing short of miraculous.

These two farms on the frontier of Brazilian farming are microcosms of a national change with global implications. In less than 30 years Brazil has turned itself from a food importer into one of the world’s great breadbaskets (see chart 1). It is the first country to have caught up with the traditional “big five” grain exporters (America, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the European Union). It is also the first tropical food-giant; the big five are all temperate producers.

The increase in Brazil’s farm production has been stunning. Between 1996 and 2006 the total value of the country’s crops rose from 23 billion reais ($23 billion) to 108 billion reais, or 365%. Brazil increased its beef exports tenfold in a decade, overtaking Australia as the world’s largest exporter. It has the world’s largest cattle herd after India’s. It is also the world’s largest exporter of poultry, sugar cane and ethanol (see chart 2). Since 1990 its soyabean output has risen from barely 15m tonnes to over 60m. Brazil accounts for about a third of world soyabean exports, second only to America. In 1994 Brazil’s soyabean exports were one-seventh of America’s; now they are six-sevenths. Moreover, Brazil supplies a quarter of the world’s soyabean trade on just 6% of the country’s arable land.

No less astonishingly, Brazil has done all this without much government subsidy. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), state support accounted for 5.7% of total farm income in Brazil during 2005-07. That compares with 12% in America, 26% for the OECD average and 29% in the European Union. And Brazil has done it without deforesting the Amazon (though that has happened for other reasons). The great expansion of farmland has taken place 1,000km from the jungle.

How did the country manage this astonishing transformation? The answer to that matters not only to Brazil but also to the rest of the world.

An attractive Brazilian model

Between now and 2050 the world’s population will rise from 7 billion to 9 billion. Its income is likely to rise by more than that and the total urban population will roughly double, changing diets as well as overall demand because city dwellers tend to eat more meat. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reckons grain output will have to rise by around half but meat output will have to double by 2050. This will be hard to achieve because, in the past decade, the growth in agricultural yields has stalled and water has become a greater constraint. By one estimate, only 40% of the increase in world grain output now comes from rises in yields and 60% comes from taking more land under cultivation. In the 1960s just a quarter came from more land and three-quarters came from higher yields.

So if you were asked to describe the sort of food producer that will matter most in the next 40 years, you would probably say something like this: one that has boosted output a lot and looks capable of continuing to do so; one with land and water in reserve; one able to sustain a large cattle herd (it does not necessarily have to be efficient, but capable of improvement); one that is productive without massive state subsidies; and maybe one with lots of savannah, since the biggest single agricultural failure in the world during past decades has been tropical Africa, and anything that might help Africans grow more food would be especially valuable. In other words, you would describe Brazil.

Brazil has more spare farmland than any other country (see chart 3). The FAO puts its total potential arable land at over 400m hectares; only 50m is being used. Brazilian official figures put the available land somewhat lower, at 300m hectares. Either way, it is a vast amount. On the FAO’s figures, Brazil has as much spare farmland as the next two countries together (Russia and America). It is often accused of levelling the rainforest to create its farms, but hardly any of this new land lies in Amazonia; most is cerrado.

Brazil also has more water. According to the UN’s World Water Assessment Report of 2009, Brazil has more than 8,000 billion cubic kilometres of renewable water each year, easily more than any other country. Brazil alone (population: 190m) has as much renewable water as the whole of Asia (population: 4 billion). And again, this is not mainly because of the Amazon. Piauí is one of the country’s driest areas but still gets a third more water than America’s corn belt.

Of course, having spare water and spare land is not much good if they are in different places (a problem in much of Africa). But according to BrasilAgro, Brazil has almost as much farmland with more than 975 millimetres of rain each year as the whole of Africa and more than a quarter of all such land in the world.

Since 1996 Brazilian farmers have increased the amount of land under cultivation by a third, mostly in the cerrado. That is quite different from other big farm producers, whose amount of land under the plough has either been flat or (in Europe) falling. And it has increased production by ten times that amount. But the availability of farmland is in fact only a secondary reason for the extraordinary growth in Brazilian agriculture. If you want the primary reason in three words, they are Embrapa, Embrapa, Embrapa.

More food without deforestation

Embrapa is short for Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária, or the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation. It is a public company set up in 1973, in an unusual fit of farsightedness by the country’s then ruling generals. At the time the quadrupling of oil prices was making Brazil’s high levels of agricultural subsidy unaffordable. Mauro Lopes, who supervised the subsidy regime, says he urged the government to give $20 to Embrapa for every $50 it saved by cutting subsidies. It didn’t, but Embrapa did receive enough money to turn itself into the world’s leading tropical-research institution. It does everything from breeding new seeds and cattle, to creating ultra-thin edible wrapping paper for foodstuffs that changes colour when the food goes off, to running a nanotechnology laboratory creating biodegradable ultra-strong fabrics and wound dressings. Its main achievement, however, has been to turn the cerrado green.

When Embrapa started, the cerrado was regarded as unfit for farming. Norman Borlaug, an American plant scientist often called the father of the Green Revolution, told the New York Times that “nobody thought these soils were ever going to be productive.” They seemed too acidic and too poor in nutrients. Embrapa did four things to change that.

First, it poured industrial quantities of lime (pulverised limestone or chalk) onto the soil to reduce levels of acidity. In the late 1990s, 14m-16m tonnes of lime were being spread on Brazilian fields each year, rising to 25m tonnes in 2003 and 2004. This amounts to roughly five tonnes of lime a hectare, sometimes more. At the 20,000-hectare Cremaq farm, 5,000 hulking 30-tonne lorries have disgorged their contents on the fields in the past three years. Embrapa scientists also bred varieties of rhizobium, a bacterium that helps fix nitrogen in legumes and which works especially well in the soil of the cerrado, reducing the need for fertilisers.

So although it is true Brazil has a lot of spare farmland, it did not just have it hanging around, waiting to be ploughed. Embrapa had to create the land, in a sense, or make it fit for farming. Today the cerrado accounts for 70% of Brazil’s farm output and has become the new Midwest. “We changed the paradigm,” says Silvio Crestana, a former head of Embrapa, proudly.

Second, Embrapa went to Africa and brought back a grass called brachiaria. Patient crossbreeding created a variety, called braquiarinha in Brazil, which produced 20-25 tonnes of grass feed per hectare, many times what the native cerrado grass produces and three times the yield in Africa. That meant parts of the cerrado could be turned into pasture, making possible the enormous expansion of Brazil’s beef herd. Thirty years ago it took Brazil four years to raise a bull for slaughter. Now the average time is 18-20 months.

That is not the end of the story. Embrapa has recently begun experiments with genetically modifying brachiaria to produce a larger-leafed variety called braquiarão which promises even bigger increases in forage. This alone will not transform the livestock sector, which remains rather inefficient. Around one-third of improvement to livestock production comes from better breeding of the animals; one-third comes from improved resistance to disease; and only one-third from better feed. But it will clearly help.

Third, and most important, Embrapa turned soyabeans into a tropical crop. Soyabeans are native to north-east Asia (Japan, the Korean peninsular and north-east China). They are a temperate-climate crop, sensitive to temperature changes and requiring four distinct seasons. All other big soyabean producers (notably America and Argentina) have temperate climates. Brazil itself still grows soya in its temperate southern states. But by old-fashioned crossbreeding, Embrapa worked out how to make it also grow in a tropical climate, on the rolling plains of Mato Grosso state and in Goiás on the baking cerrado. More recently, Brazil has also been importing genetically modified soya seeds and is now the world’s second-largest user of GM after the United States. This year Embrapa won approval for its first GM seed.

Embrapa also created varieties of soya that are more tolerant than usual of acid soils (even after the vast application of lime, the cerrado is still somewhat acidic). And it speeded up the plants’ growing period, cutting between eight and 12 weeks off the usual life cycle. These “short cycle” plants have made it possible to grow two crops a year, revolutionising the operation of farms. Farmers used to plant their main crop in September and reap in May or June. Now they can harvest in February instead, leaving enough time for a full second crop before the September planting. This means the “second” crop (once small) has become as large as the first, accounting for a lot of the increases in yields.

Such improvements are continuing. The Cremaq farm could hardly have existed until recently because soya would not grow on this hottest, most acidic of Brazilian backlands. The variety of soya now being planted there did not exist five years ago. Dr Crestana calls this “the genetic transformation of soya”.

Lastly, Embrapa has pioneered and encouraged new operational farm techniques. Brazilian farmers pioneered “no-till” agriculture, in which the soil is not ploughed nor the crop harvested at ground level. Rather, it is cut high on the stalk and the remains of the plant are left to rot into a mat of organic material. Next year’s crop is then planted directly into the mat, retaining more nutrients in the soil. In 1990 Brazilian farmers used no-till farming for 2.6% of their grains; today it is over 50%.

Embrapa’s latest trick is something called forest, agriculture and livestock integration: the fields are used alternately for crops and livestock but threads of trees are also planted in between the fields, where cattle can forage. This, it turns out, is the best means yet devised for rescuing degraded pasture lands. Having spent years increasing production and acreage, Embrapa is now turning to ways of increasing the intensity of land use and of rotating crops and livestock so as to feed more people without cutting down the forest.
Farmers everywhere gripe all the time and Brazilians, needless to say, are no exception. Their biggest complaint concerns transport. The fields of Mato Grosso are 2,000km from the main soyabean port at Paranaguá, which cannot take the largest, most modern ships. So Brazil transports a relatively low-value commodity using the most expensive means, lorries, which are then forced to wait for ages because the docks are clogged.

Partly for that reason, Brazil is not the cheapest place in the world to grow soyabeans (Argentina is, followed by the American Midwest). But it is the cheapest place to plant the next acre. Expanding production in Argentina or America takes you into drier marginal lands which are much more expensive to farm. Expanding in Brazil, in contrast, takes you onto lands pretty much like the ones you just left.

Big is beautiful

Like almost every large farming country, Brazil is divided between productive giant operations and inefficient hobby farms. According to Mauro and Ignez Lopes of the Fundacão Getulio Vargas, a university in Rio de Janeiro, half the country’s 5m farms earn less than 10,000 reais a year and produce just 7% of total farm output; 1.6m are large commercial operations which produce 76% of output. Not all family farms are a drain on the economy: much of the poultry production is concentrated among them and they mop up a lot of rural underemployment. But the large farms are vastly more productive.

From the point of view of the rest of the world, however, these faults in Brazilian agriculture do not matter much. The bigger question for them is: can the miracle of the cerrado be exported, especially to Africa, where the good intentions of outsiders have so often shrivelled and died?

There are several reasons to think it can. Brazilian land is like Africa’s: tropical and nutrient-poor. The big difference is that the cerrado gets a decent amount of rain and most of Africa’s savannah does not (the exception is the swathe of southern Africa between Angola and Mozambique).

Brazil imported some of its raw material from other tropical countries in the first place. Brachiaria grass came from Africa. The zebu that formed the basis of Brazil’s nelore cattle herd came from India. In both cases Embrapa’s know-how improved them dramatically. Could they be taken back and improved again? Embrapa has started to do that, though it is early days and so far it is unclear whether the technology retransfer will work.

A third reason for hope is that Embrapa has expertise which others in Africa simply do not have. It has research stations for cassava and sorghum, which are African staples. It also has experience not just in the cerrado but in more arid regions (called the sertão), in jungles and in the vast wetlands on the border with Paraguay and Bolivia. Africa also needs to make better use of similar lands. “Scientifically, it is not difficult to transfer the technology,” reckons Dr Crestana. And the technology transfer is happening at a time when African economies are starting to grow and massive Chinese aid is starting to improve the continent’s famously dire transport system.

Still, a word of caution is in order. Brazil’s agricultural miracle did not happen through a simple technological fix. No magic bullet accounts for it—not even the tropical soyabean, which comes closest. Rather, Embrapa’s was a “system approach”, as its scientists call it: all the interventions worked together. Improving the soil and the new tropical soyabeans were both needed for farming the cerrado; the two together also made possible the changes in farm techniques which have boosted yields further.

Systems are much harder to export than a simple fix. “We went to the US and brought back the whole package [of cutting-edge agriculture in the 1970s],” says Dr Crestana. “That didn’t work and it took us 30 years to create our own. Perhaps Africans will come to Brazil and take back the package from us. Africa is changing. Perhaps it won’t take them so long. We’ll see.” If we see anything like what happened in Brazil itself, feeding the world in 2050 will not look like the uphill struggle it appears to be now.

[newton]

Interesting article but I didn't see the reference to the problems associated that follow, we all know that deforestation for agriculture only provides short term usage as the soil soon gets leached of any nutrients and the rain then exacerbates the poor soil erosion... on a larger scale It is a definite factor in creating landslides that threaten nearby communities. It also decimates the wildlife biohabitat leading to a loss of very many economically important plants and animals thus defeating the object of benefitting local communities. subsequently since controlling this land requires intensive techniques usually only available to the large multi national conglomerates it also strips the assets away from the local communities for the profit and greed of foreign shareholders.

Wealthy countries or the erstwhile colonial powers having deficit of their own natural resources are mainly sustaining on the resources of the financially poorer countries that are generally natural resource rich. Twenty per cent of the world’s population is using 80 per cent of the world’s resources. Unfortunately also the governments of these poor resource rich countries generally adopted the same growth-syndrome as their western neighbours or their erstwhile colonial masters giving emphasis on maximizing exports, revenues and exploiting their rich natural resources unsustainably for short-term gains. Moreover, corruption in government, the military and economic powers is well known. The problem is further worsened by the low price of the most Third World exports being realized in the international market (Colchester and Lohmann, 1993).

Pursuing the guided development agenda, the financially poorer countries are on a heavy international debt and now feeling the urgency of repaying these huge debts due to escalating interest rates. Such a situation compels these debt ridden poorer countries to exploit their rich natural resources including their forests partly to earn foreign exchange for servicing their debts. For instance, construction of roads for logging operations in some
South-east Asian countries was funded by Japanese aid which allowed the Japanese timber companies to exploit the forests of these countries. Understandably, these timber companies profitably exploited the forests while the South-east Asian countries were left owing Japan
money for construction of their roads (Colchester and Lohmann, 1993).

*** Rant over ***

A classic example is If many of our own agricultural lands in Pakistan did not have planted banks surrounding the smaller plots of lands we too would find most if not all of our fertile soil washed away and promptly deposited into the river during the monsoon rains. It has taken hundreds of years for our subsistence farmers to master control of the land. would you want to strip away those assets and knowledge for the short term gain. ask yourself again who would benefit and what would we lose.

[mikhurram]

Brazil success with farming has ensured that between 1996 and 2006 the total value of the country's crops rose by 365% by increase land productivity without any government subsidy which is commendable feat considering that US and Europeans farmers rely on heavy subsidies doled out by their governments. The approach was by creating Research Institutes, improving the soil, making use of farming techniques often advocated by organic or green advocates.

A major criticism may be that rainforests might being depleted which gets mitigated as the article points out that "Brazil has more spare farmland than any other country. On the FAO's figures, Brazil has as much spare farmland as the next two countries together (Russia and America). It is often accused of levelling the rainforest to create its farms, but hardly any of this new land lies in Amazonia; most is cerrado."

Secondly metioned in the article that their Research Institute or "Embrapa has pioneered and encouraged new operational farm techniques. Brazilian farmers pioneered “no-till” agriculture, in which the soil is not ploughed nor the crop harvested at ground level "
This is something which is encouraged by environmentalist and organic farmers to be a natural method of gardening that increases soil fertility. These advocates believe that tilling is bad for land in the long-term because it breaks the soil’s structure, ultimately leading to soil erosion. It also destroys fungi, earthworms, organic material, and bacteria, which all play an important role in natural and healthy soil ecology.

Third they improved the structure of their soil without resorting to fertlizers which tend to have side-effects in the long run by poisoning the soil . As stated in the aricle "First, it poured industrial quantities of lime (pulverised limestone or chalk) onto the soil to reduce levels of acidity. Embrapa scientists also bred varieties of rhizobium, a bacterium that helps fix nitrogen in legumes and which works especially well in the soil of the cerrado, reducing the need for fertilisers."
Over here in Pakistan our soil is the opposite to that of Brazil and is mainly clay. The clay structure can be improved by pouring gypsum in the soil beds. Also making use of the rhizobium bacteriam is also encouraged by environmentalists without resorting to fertlisers.

Another point mentioned in the article is making use genetic engineering to increase crop yield.
" Embrapa went to Africa and brought back a grass called brachiaria. Patient crossbreeding created a variety, called braquiarinha in Brazil, which produced 20-25 tonnes of grass feed per hectare, many times what the native cerrado grass produces and three times the yield in Africa. That meant parts of the cerrado could be turned into pasture, making possible the enormous expansion of Brazil's beef herd. Thirty years ago it took Brazil four years to raise a bull for slaughter. Now the average time is 18-20 months.
That is not the end of the story. Embrapa has recently begun experiments with genetically modifying brachiaria to produce a larger-leafed variety called braquiarão which promises even bigger increases in forage. This alone will not transform the livestock sector, which remains rather inefficient. Around one-third of improvement to livestock production comes from better breeding of the animals; one-third comes from improved resistance to disease; and only one-third from better feed."

Last important of all is "Embrapa's latest trick is something called forest, agriculture and livestock integration: the fields are used alternately for crops and livestock but threads of trees are also planted in between the fields, where cattle can forage. This, it turns out, is the best means yet devised for rescuing degraded pasture lands. Having spent years increasing production and acreage, Embrapa is now turning to ways of increasing the intensity of land use and of rotating crops and livestock so as to feed more people without cutting down the forest".

There might be problems using GMO crops which perhaps is one of the drawbacks but then again we have to ask ourselves that do we have any better alternatives. Pakistan's currently population is around 200 million which was around 80 million in the mid 80's. Faced with a burgeoning population whose demands in terms of shelter, food, health care and provision of electricity is going to increase.

The Chinese under Deng in late 70's began experimenting with their economy and through their economic miracle lifted millions of people under poverty. India which used to a net importer of grain till the mid 60's through research became a net exporter of grain. Our Punjab has 4 times the land versus Indian Punjab and yet the Indian side produces more and feeds almost the entire nation of almost 1 billion. I was able to find some statistics that Indian Punjab produced 14.36 million tons of wheat in 1996- 98 from 3.3 million hectares while the output in Pakistan's Punjab was 13.13 million tons from 5.9 million hectures. Likewise their cotton output which traditionally used to be same as the output in Pakistan is now the largest in the world. Cotton production in India is normally around 26 billion bales versus 12.8 million bales in Pakistan in roughly the same area of cultivation.

Since we are an agrarian based economy only through increased productivity and better techniques aided by research can we ensure our economic survival or keep relaying on foreign aid forever !!

[mikhurram]

Mistakenly wrote that the cotton output in Pakistan is largest in the world in fact it is the 4th in number. Had meant to write that cotton output in India is the 2nd largest in the world

[Tahir Khan]

I read about Cerrado in News week this morning about a woman named Katia Abreu, Brazils biggest landowner farmer and rauncher , She is a tough woman.

[newton]

In my humble opinion the other side of the coin.

Rape of the earths natural resources for the greedy corporate multinationals which are wholly or mainly owned by the EU AND US is not a miracle...

The cerrado is tropical savannah grassland interspersed with rainforests and mountainous steppes. covering approx. 20% of Brazils total landmass.Temperature in this vast area stays between 22- 27 degrees celcius throughout the year, the precipitation is anything between 800 and 1500 mm per annum and there are only two season - wet and dry of course if you turn 80% of it to crops then you will get a bumper harvest

However nearly 10,000 species of animal and plants were wiped out during this process 100s of them endemic (unique) to this area alone. The trees and roots chopped down were used for charcoal (as a nice cheap supply for the factories and this is continuing daily) add this to the multinational UK/US owned company profit ratios.

Guess what it didn't happen by accident, huge subsidies, grants, assistance and tax incentives were given wholesale to companies to convert and clear the savannahs for farmland for the growing of crops. All of it quickly turned to industrial scale farming leaving local farmers out of pocket and lamenting their plight. Why??? Land prices increase out of their reach, food prices continue to rise because most of the farmland is being used for growing sugar cane by subsidiaries of petroleum companies like Total for the production of ethanol for bio diesel. Consequently the area for growing food crops is actually now less than it once was hence of no real benefit to the local economy. An actual detriment as food prices continue to skyrocket. The best produce is exported anyway bypassing the local markets altogether.

To get to this stage the soil had to have industrial scale amounts of chemicals including limes and sulphurs added to make it capable of growing the crops. Several of brazils major rivers source blood is the Cerrado. There is scientific evidence produced that these chemical are leeching out and poisoning the water destroying the aquatic habitats throughout the river systems.

There is talk of using this as a role model for some of africas grasslands.

How can all of this help Pakistan,, personally I cant see that it can or in fact be replicated anywhere here as the basic conditions of climate are totally different, we have the monsoon rain bucketloads and the dry scorching heats of may/june. If you clear vast areas of land then its guaranteed certainly within the Punjab that in a year or two vast quantities of your most fertile top soil will be dumped into the river indus. It will leave behind eroded ravines and fallow sandy subsoil rendering it totally useless for anything other than scrubland. The rivers now clogged up would change course endangering the very many towns and cities located on the river banks.

With Pakistan's climate, economic performance and poor worldwide reputation for corruption I can see why many multi national companies wont invest their technology, expertise or cash.

,, now the wheat is ripening at 12inch but prices continue to rise and keeping cows at home is very very expensive. tractors, diesel, water labour weeding fertilising all costs excess money. At least when the old wheat was grown there was plenty of fodder left behind, it didn't cost me very much to till my land, weeds and fertilising was done naturally and the taste of the food was extraordinary,,, what price progress eh???

Please tell me somebody if I have missed the point somewhere.....im sorry I don't want to eat obscene out of shape cows nor do I want my kebabs to be from animal free genetically modified and cultured meat grown in a test tube in a Faisalabad factory. If you don't believe me google it,, real meat is being grown artificially in test tubes for human consumption.,,, now a question for scholars,,,, how do we make that halaal????

Rant over,,,now to check out some pics of Brazils finest beef and millk cattle, you judge for yourself

regards
Ifzal

[Hamad Ahmed Kisana]

terrible but true facts..you opened our eyes....in fact we are going to live in artificial environment if this progress continued..

[Hamad Ahmed Kisana]

do I want my kebabs to be from animal free genetically modified and cultured meat grown in a test tube in a Faisalabad factory. If you don't believe me google it,, real meat is being grown artificially in test tubes for human consumption.,,, now a question for scholars,,,, how do we make that halaal????

is it real news mr ifzaal..because few days back i was reading in newspaper that first artificial meat burger is prepared in america.so how it is possible that Pakistan is already making artificial meat..? please give address of website for this news...

[Hamad Ahmed Kisana]

here is news about scientific burger..so i dont think it can happen in faisalabd.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013 ... stem-cells

[newton]

Im sorry I should have made it clear that I mention Faisalabad factory as a potential future grower of cultured meat. That was only because Faisalabad is known as a major city of industry in the Punjab