THE government of Punjab has demonstrated remarkable complacency by expressing satisfaction over a situation that should have sent alarm bells ringing at a loud pitch. Not only that: it seemed to congratulate itself on a situation that would be translated in considerable loss of yield for the wheat crop for the year 2002-03.
A meeting of the provincial Wheat Working Group, a body that oversees the progress of the crop was told on November 28 that the crop had been cultivated on 6.388 million acres by November 23, constituting 42.41 per cent area of the total target wheat land of 14.82 m acres in the province. The meeting was attended by high officials of the provincial agriculture department and presided over by the department’s secretary.
The secretary went through motions that inform of either a lamentable lack of know-how or an excess of unconcern as he directed ‘extension officers to make full use of the 341 seed graders and motivate farmers to sow graded wheat seed’. End November should have been time for worrying over issues other than quality of seed.
The state of cultivation has to be seen in the context of agriculture expert’s opinion as also the federal government’s deadline for wheat sowing. Experts regard November 15 as the time for completing what sowing to ensure maximum yield while the federal government had also instructed provinces to complete the cultivation of wheat by this date. The deadline was apparently fixed in consultation with the experts’ advice for the crop.
Delay in sowing after November 15 causes a one per cent loss in production every day. That can be calculated to a staggering figure. The department should have been pushing farmers to cultivate the remaining lands as quickly as possible and providing them maximum help and facilities for this purpose but seemed pleased that nearly 60 per cent area in Punjab was yet to be cultivated a week after the deadline had gone by.
The latest figures on the percentage of land on which wheat has been cultivated in Punjab are not available but reports inform that sowing is still being done in many parts of the province. A number of farmers are often engaged in wheat cultivation as late as the middle or late December.
This is in total contrast from cultivation practices in the wheat producing Indian states of Punjab and Haryana where sowing is completed by November 15 and farmers cultivating the crop after November 30 are fined. They produce about 45 maunds per acre while Pakistan’s average yield is around 25 maunds for the same land. However, many other factors also contribute to this vast difference in the productivity of the two areas of the same region.
Top of the inventory of the local farmer’s handicaps are the policies of the government towards the agriculture sector in general and towards wheat in particular. Support price for wheat was raised three years back. It has not been reviewed although prices of inputs have shot up since then.
While the attitude of the provincial authorities is to be regretted, all blame should not be heaped on them for delayed sowing. A number of factors coalesce to create this situation. A cycle of delayed sowing and harvesting blocks the wheat grower’s progress.
One of them is harvesting of the crop replaced by wheat. Sugar-cane and wheat are widely alternated. Crushing season is supposed to start by or on the first of October. Sugar mill owners delay it almost invariably to place cane growers under pressure and bring them to a stage where they have no option but to submit to the mill owner’s terms. This year, the crushing season started as late as the third week of November.
The government seems to have been cognizant of the situation, indeed worried as the Punjab governor himself stepped into the scene but the intervention came too late to facilitate on-time sowing of wheat. But it has become abundantly clear by now that unless the crops cultivated on wheat land did not adhere to strict cultivation and harvesting schedule, wheat productivity would continue to suffer. An overall plan and stringent measures or disciplining the sector and tuning it to productivity are urgently needed.
Meanwhile, other steps are also indicated for improving yield per acre instead of increasing cultivation area. The policy of extending crop cultivation area, as is done by the government, is a step in the negative direction, particularly as water resources have been shrinking.
Water shortage was placed at 34 per cent for the rabi crop but it seems that a prolonged dry weather spell would make availability of the water more acute and raise shortage to 40 er cent or above. Under the circumstance, adding to wheat area amounts to creating unneeded and dangerous complications. But the federal ministry of agriculture obviously either lacks expertise or it does not care because it increased wheat cultivation target from last year’s 8.057 million hectares to 8.08 m ha for the current year. The increase may be nominal but it underlines unrealistic and short-term policies.
At the moment, Pakistan is producing about one ton of wheat per acre. This can easily be increased by 50 per cent if proper measures are adopted and emphasis is shifted to productivity from enhancing total output through increase in cultivation area.
The government fixed a target of 19.75 million tones of wheat production for the current year, setting its eyes on an increase of about 1.42 million tones over the last year. This is approximately the quantity required for domestic consumption. But this certainly does not represent the potential of the farming sector.
It needs to be harnessed more effectively and expertly to produce more on less land rather than make an effort to extend cultivation land to produce more so that Pakistan can continue earning foreign exchange by exporting wheat and if that is not possible, at least ensure that imports are not resorted to for meeting domestic food needs.
