A NEW crop of wheat has been harvested in Sindh and Balochistan while it has commenced in Punjab and NWFP. Prospects and reports are positive but there are apprehensions about the final count. Federal government officials are hopeful about the country crossing the 20.2 million production target set for the crop while private sector experts and many farmers are not so sure even of meeting the target.
Fears are mainly weather related. Rains came at the right time and compensated for water shortage; farmers had no complaints on this score. But weather conditions then became dicey and it was felt that persistent rainfall, strong winds and hailstorm in many wheat cultivated areas may have damaged the crop. The exact or even near exact assessment of negative impact of weather is not known. A minimum of five percent loss in yield that could go up to ten percent is not ruled out by experts.
The blessing and wrath of nature are outside the control of the managers of the sector and at this point in time, the authorities have no option but to go through the motions. That exercise has been in progress for some time with the raising of the minimum purchase price, fixing of procurement targets and laying down arrangements to ensure efficient management of this end, among other measures, to smoothly accomplish the task.
Punjab, the province with the highest produce- it was given the target of producing 16 million metric tons, has made elaborate arrangements for procurement by setting up nearly 450 procurement centres that represent a more than one hundred percent increase in the number of procurement points. The provincial administration seems to be taking all the right steps. Its success for fulfilling the 3.5 m tons procurement target would however depend on factors it cannot control all the way. However, in one vital end it has failed to tie is reliable storage facilities.
Punjab’s task has been complicated and made more difficult by the federal government’s decision to remove the ban on inter-provincial movement of the commodity. The ban was a controversial policy resented by the other three provinces. But it had its plus points and not merely for Punjab. The province has a responsibility to meet food needs of its populace. That this should be top priority for any administration cannot be denied.
Secondly, it is only by managing its resources efficiently so that the province can deliver for other provinces too. The most important aspect of the policy was that it curtailed the activities of wheat smugglers.
That large scale operation of smuggling of wheat to Afghanistan and, according to reports, from there to some former central Asian states, is carried out through the North Western Province and Balochistan is an controvertibly established fact. That is one of the reasons of recurrent shortage of wheat in a country of agriculture based economy. Borders between Pakistan’s provinces of NWFP and Balochistan are long and extremely porous and, this should be no news to any one, managed corruptly and inefficiently. The ban thus served as measure against excessive smuggling of the commodity.
There seems nothing that the administration can do to put a complete stop to the practice. One way of looking at the situation is that segments within the government sustain smuggling of various commodities out of and in to Pakistan. Afghan Transit Trade that has been the cause of perishing or at least seriously undermining some industries.
Another is that smuggling has reached gigantic proportions and won such powerful patrons that those who sincerely view it as adverse to national interests are helpless and ineffective while the sun is constantly and brightly shining for promoters of smuggling.
This is hardly surprising. Pakistan has a thriving heroin mafia, a cartel that reduces to the government’s efforts to bring the price of the commodity down to a bitter joke and gangs protecting ‘trade from and to Afghan’ for years, indeed even during the period when Afghanistan was deep in a bleeding strife. A wheat smugglers mafia should not come as surprise to any one.
Smuggling, it is known, cannot be eliminated by routine measures and extraordinary efforts have to be ruled out in view of the political exigencies besetting the government. There is consequently no way of blocking the ‘export’ of a certain quantity of wheat or flour produced by Pakistan. That is one of the reasons for criticism of the ban on inter- provincial, indeed inter- district movement of wheat.
Well, the government caved in and that should read as enhanced ‘unofficial export’ and as a possible fall out, shortage and higher prices of wheat at some stage despite a good crop.
But all this should not have been a hindrance for the Punjab government to enhance the capacity and quality of its storage facilities. Its warehouse resources are pathetic, superannuated and hardly fulfil the purpose of safe storage. Statistics wise, the province has capacity for storing 0.2424 million metric tons; the procurement target is 3.5 m tons. Officials would most certainly find an elaborate and convincing argument to explain that what they possess is sufficient but facts narrate a different story.
A majority of warehouses are not meant for this purpose and are makeshift converted in to storage around this time of the year. Those built specifically for this purpose belong to a lost era. A former Food Department official described them as places infested by rats, bats and all varieties of birds and insects and have not been fumigated since no one knows when. The makeshift ones are in an even worse state. The quality of wheat is damaged and the stored commodity suffers loss of quantity too. The facilities are state of the art in reverse form.
Other than this aspect, the provincial government seems sincere in promoting agriculture and livestock sectors. This is politically desirable for the administration because these sectors represent over 60 percent of the electorate. But why it has not been able to attend to this requirement when there is no shortage of funds is a mystery particularly as many members of assemblies are from rural background. It recently announced plan for setting up a high-tech entertainment complex at a huge cost.
Technology is not a handicap either. During the last few days, the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone of a car and a tractor factory. Constructing warehouses for wheat should be a less expensive undertaking than I-Max entertainment and technically a less demanding project than car or tractor factory.
One should think that proper and safe storage of wheat should be a higher priority than expensive entertainment, which a majority of masses would not be able to afford. And it should also be greater need for the country than tractors because what is the point in mechanization of the agriculture sector if its produce is squandered.
The government often stresses the need for value addition at farm level. What it can do is reduce losses at the farm level by providing storage facilities to farmers who loose a percentage of the yield because they have no means for properly storing it. Exactly what achievements the government expects to make in the sector when cotton is burnt in to ashes and wheat is served to rats and bats, is any body’s guess.
A NEW crop of wheat has been harvested in Sindh and Balochistan while it has commenced in Punjab and NWFP. Prospects and reports are positive but there are apprehensions about the final count. Federal government officials are hopeful about the country crossing the 20.2 million production target set for the crop while private sector experts and many farmers are not so sure even of meeting the target.