LAHORE, Oct 16: As Pakistan’s storage agencies get desperate to sell wheat to the international donors for feeding the Afghan refugees, farmers from the Punjab sound caution against an unplanned sell out of the crop.

The world donor agencies have already placed orders of around half a million tons with the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Livestock that in turn was now allocating quota to the PASSCO and the Punjab Food Department. The Food Department has already supplied 30,000 tons and is preparing to sell another 40,000 tons. The PASSCO also has dispatched 12,000 tons and waiting for further allocation from the MINFAL.

The stocks position of these agencies was phenomenally better and was one reason for their impatience to sell the crop. The Punjab Food Department has around 3.7 million tons of stock. The flour mills normally start getting wheat from the department by mid-August and consume around 2.6 million tons during the year. But this time, millers have not yet started purchasing wheat and might delay the buying till Nov 1. That leaves three months’ additional stocks of 0.6 million tons with the department. The department expects to have 1.7 million tons of surplus stocks at the end of the year that it wants to sell now.

The PASSCO also has stock of around 0.8 million tons and is getting increasingly desperate to sell it. Of late, it even floated a tender for private parties on the plea that provincial governments and foreign buyers were not buying stock. It is understandable that these circumstances made agencies desperate to sell their stocks, but, according to farmers, is not justifiable.

The growers from the Punjab feel that the government should first take stock of the wheat production next year before selling existing stocks.

“There is going to be at least 65 per cent water shortage this year during the rabi season. The reason for bumper crop during the last two years was that the drought condition was mainly concentrated in the kharif season. This year, it is going to hit the rabi season directly. The government must assess its own future situation before selling wheat to international donors otherwise it may end up in import of the commodity next year at a much higher rate, that too in foreign exchange,” says a wheat grower.

“The farmers face a difficult choice for wheat sowing,” claims another farmer. “The water situation is totally uncertain and price of the crop crashed last year. Of course, the government cannot do anything about the water crisis but it certainly can ensure farmers against price crash this year. It can increase support price and devise better strategies for dealing with marketing and procurement problem to attract the grower back to wheat crop,” he said.

But officials from the Food Department defend their decision to sell as much wheat as they can on the ground that though drought conditions persist but holding back on sales hardly made any sense if the crop patron of last two years was something to go by. Even this year, two crucial watering — one after 18 to 25 days and other after 70 to 80 days — were ensured by water management. Rains in between or after can make the difference. So there is no logic in keeping these stocks and spending million of rupees on them till next year.

Wheat is sown on such a massive scale — on 21 million acres against 7.5 million acres cotton and 3.5 million acres rice — that farmers cannot sow anything else on it, says an official of the Agriculture Department. It is not to underestimate their problems but only to underscore lack of options for farmers during the rabi season. Wheat is also the most easy crop to sow and grow. Temperature and water evaporation are low in this season and both help the crop. Then, there is forecast of rains during January and February which may further brighten the chances of crop. This is not to suggest that drought will have no impact on the crop but one should hope for the best, he adds.

The Met office, on the other hand maintained, that there were very low rains during the last quarter of the year and it would be too early to predict anything about the first quarter of the next year. “Chances of rain are always there but predictions cannot be made at this stage,” says a Met official.