PAKISTAN is on the brink of a wheat fiasco that may be entirely the making of concocted figures to show flamboyant growth. Or it would be the result of inept handling of a wheat crop that is lower than the envisaged and the declared output.
Already, there is talk of importing about one million tons of wheat to meet domestic needs. This is the starting point. We could end up importing double this quantity and pay for it more than what local farmers are given and the quality may be dubious.
While much hue and cry was raised about the quality of imported wheat two years back, concern for quality was pushed back last year because imports were unplanned and made under duress. The import scenario this year could be a more hurriedly written script.
The ministry of food, agriculture and livestock (Minfal) continues to insist that the target of 22.2 million tons was missed by a whisker and that wheat crop stands at 21.6m tons and hence there are no questions of wheat imports but ground conditions present a different picture. The price of wheat would not have soared if produce was sufficient and the food departments and Passco were not lagging behind their modest procurement targets.
Why does the government release production and yield statistic whose veracity can be ascertained by ground conditions is incomprehensible. Figures about certain areas, for instance population, have to be accepted because there is no way of verifying them. One is bund to go by them even if they are negated by the general view in the country.
However, questionable statistics about the yield of crops cannot survive for long because the principles of supply and demand come in to operation and prices of commodities determine realities. Wheat price in the market and soaring rates of flour that have upset even the Prime Minister inform of a shortfall in wheat produce.
The government has been on a high for the wheat crop this year, as it invariably always is since the bumper crop of 1999-2000. It was expecting another boom. The hope and the assessment had some justification till one point in time but once weather took the wrong turn close to harvesting, the situation crystallized and it became evident that the target would become elusive.
The quantity of shortfall should have been the concern of the managers of the agriculture sector. Instead, they took shelter behind estimates and stuck to their guns of another bumper crop. One wishes they were correct but the situation on ground contradicts them.
The Economic Survey, basing its information on wheat on reports of the Minfal, had dished out provisional estimates that placed wheat output at 21.10 million tons and stated that the total crop was 8.2 per cent higher than the last year and yield per hectare had gone up by 6.7 per cent. One wishes that conclusion was also authentic. But the wheat scope is different and negative, a fact that can be verified by prices of the commodity in the market.
How much would be the shortfall is yet to be determined but farmers and officials one has talked to report shrivelled grain plus general lower yield per acre. Some farmers go to the extent of saying that yield has been lower by 10 to 20 per cent in many districts of Punjab.
The situation has been complicated by the vast difference in the government and private sector rates. The government offers Rs400 per bag of 40 maunds while the private sector is willing to purchase the same quantity with additional payment of Rs50.
The result is the failure of official procurement drives; many farmers are reportedly holding on to their produce in the hope of a further escalation of price. By now they know that imports would be costlier and feel that rates given to farmers of other countries should be their due too. The argument is valid though it is not going to happen.
Private sector offers are creeping up though only slightly after hitting the Rs450 mark. Meanwhile, the State Bank of Pakistan has also played a role in depriving farmers from obtaining due rates from the market by delaying its credit policy for the private sector.
What the government wishes to do is incomprehensible. The State Bank is moving in one direction and decision makers in Islamabad are following a different route. The government is in favour of deregulation of wheat trade and intends to withdraw the six percent withholding tax on wheat import to ‘make the business attractive to the private sector’. These are contradictory moves.
Weather, however has not been the only factor for low yield. The government policies have been high flow platitudes short on effective and contemporary technological support for the sector. One of the reasons for static yields is superannuated methods of cultivation. Majority of farmers still rely on broadcast sowing.
That restricts plant population and hampers growth. Such methods were served when food requirements were limited. The population explosion has changed things. A much greater quantity of food is now needed to fill the stomachs of the teeming millions.
Most western countries and even developing nations-India is an example, have converted their agriculture to new techniques and machinery and top of that list are conservation technologies. They have been propagated in Pakistan too, but lack of dynamic government support for their wide dissemination, availability of tools and training of farmers has hampered their desired growth in Pakistan.
Farmers cultivating land with conservation technologies, particularly the zero tillage (ZT) have reported considerably higher yields than their counterparts relying on broadcast sowing. The ZT not only helps boost produce but also conserves water, a rapidly shrinking vital resource and lowers investment on the crop in terms of diesel, fertilizer and other inputs.
Higher produce with lower investment is an incentive for farmers. But small landowners are not in a position to make the transition from inherited methods of cultivation to new technologies on their own. The government must step forward and bridge the distance between the growers and modern methods.
That is not being done fast enough. Indeed scant attention is being paid to this all important aspect of agriculture. Modernizing the sector is the name of the game and slogans would take the country nowhere.
PAKISTAN is on the brink of a wheat fiasco that may be entirely the making of concocted figures to show flamboyant growth. Or it would be the result of inept handling of a wheat crop that is lower than the envisaged and the declared output.
