SHAKARGARH - Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is taking effective steps and utilizing all-out resources to raise the agriculture production including rice, wheat, cotton and other crops in the province. The Punjab government has been providing facilities to the farmers including the reduction in prices of tractors, installation of tube-wells, provision of fertilizers and pesticides to small farmers which would help growers to enhance the production of agriculture. Addressing a meeting of workers here, Chairman Young Welfare Society Nasir Shafqat Khan said that the Punjab Chief Minister had distributed about 20,000 tractors under the Green Tractor Scheme during the last two years. He said that the small farmers were getting benefits of the scheme. Meanwhile, former NRB Chairman Danial Aziz Chaudhry has lauded the campaign launched by the government for growing more rice crops for attaining self-sufficiency. Talking to newsmen, he said that the increase in the yield of rice was essential for economic growth. He urged the government to chalked out a plan for the encouragement of farmers in which they would be given cash prizes and free of cost tractors in achieving the target of rice production in per acre area. He asked the farmers to complete their agriculture pass books immediately so as to obtain agricultural loans from the ADBP for buying fertilizers, seeds, diesel and pesticides.