THE growing unrest in rural Pakistan — mainly rooted in the international commodity price crash — seems to have assumed proportions where it can no longer be ignored.

The prime minister’s Rs321bn ‘kissan package’ — some components of which have now been stayed by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) — was an attempt by the ruling party to contain the discontent in the farming community.

Besides the protests by farmers across Punjab over the past few months, the PTI’s reaction to the package and the JI’s march for the cause of growers last week support the view that the lingering issues confronting the farm sector — related to the availability and cost of inputs and the pricing of produce — need to be addressed effectively without any loss of time.

Experts see the downward price trajectory in the global commodity market persisting in the short run, limiting the options of gainful disposal of agricultural produce at viable prices in the domestic market.

While huge stocks of rice and wheat from last year are still lying in private and public storage points across the country, the arrival of the new crop in November is expected to compound the problem, with no ready solution in sight.

The crisis is not of low yields or crop shortfalls, but of efficient management of the big stocks of commodities. The affordability aspect of primary commodities for the masses is crucial, but the viability of the farming activity is said to be vital for the nation’s food security. Finding the right balance is not easy but can be achieved if the federal and provincial governments give the issue the priority it deserves, instead of scoring political points.

“The contribution of the rural economy has persistently been undermined in Pakistan. Despite many challenges, the farming community has shown remarkable resilience. The yields and production have been consistently increasing over the past decade,” grumbled a progressive farmer of Punjab.

“The farming community, inspired by a windfall six years back, reinvested the earnings from the 2008 world commodity boom in land and technology. Unfortunately, instead of facilitating the marketing of a higher level of production, the government stepped away, leaving the farmers alone to deal with surpluses

“The farming community across the eastern border also displayed the same trend, but the Indian government acted promptly to win them the Iranian rice market and supported them through incentives and subsidies,” said another Lahore-based expert.

“Truckloads of their veggies and fruits cross over Wagah the moment an opportunity emerges in Pakistan, but the same ease of business is not available to Pakistani commodity producers, as all kinds of non-tariff barriers effectively block their entry into the huge market next door,” he added.

“The prices of all agriculture produce have been under pressure for the past two years. How can farmers sustain themselves when they are forced to sell not just perishables but even cash crops like paddy, cotton and sugarcane at very low margins, and for lower than their cost of production in extreme cases,” Dr Qadir Baloch asked.

Can the challenge be dealt with by following ad-hoc, half-backed politically motivated policies? Many informed officials and researchers believe that while government intervention will be necessary, the outcome will also depend on the quality of the policy and the level of preparedness at the provincial level to implement it.

“The PML-N should thank the PTI and the ECP, which partially stopped the implementation of the package. Judging from the level of the preparedness of the provinces, the package would have boomeranged,” said an expert who wished anonymity.

Except for Punjab, the hierarchy in the other provinces was not so alive to the short- and long-term challenges confronting the rural masses — a situation that can propel into a full-blown crisis threatening the nation’s food security and eroding the viability of industries that depend on agriculture for their raw material.

Punjab has initiated assessment studies to get a handle on the situation. Provincial government officials see the ‘kissan package’ in a positive light and confirm their participation in developing the package. They add that the package reflects nothing but the government’s intent to take issues confronting the rural economy more seriously.

“The cash transfer component was inducted in the package after a long debate that culminated in its favour over indirect subsidy, which supposedly benefits bigger farmers unfairly. The fact that direct cash transfer to the targeted marginalised people enjoys more acceptability in global development circles was also a factor, as opposed to indirect subsidies, which distort the market,” Punjab’s special secretary for agriculture Gulzar Hussain Shah informed over phone from Lahore.

“For long-term management, we are looking at crop diversification; replacement of archaic mundies with commodity exchanges; arranging the flow of real-time information across the agriculture value chain; and devising efficient systems to support needy farmers without upsetting the market,” he added.

“Something is better than nothing,” said Dr Anjum Buttar while commenting on the package.

The leaders of the other three provinces told Dawn that the package was ‘a bolt from the blue’. “You can check the record of proceedings of the Council of Common Interests. It was never discussed and was announced without taking the provinces on board,” said a relevant official in Sindh.

“Window dressing and ad-hoc, piecemeal solutions will not work. The country needs a workable agriculture policy and dynamic institutions with the capacity to adjust to changing demands of the market,” Sindh Abadgar Board Secretary Mehmud Nawaz Shah commented over phone.

“Balochistan is not considered worthy to be taken into confidence, and then people question the reasons for the province’s sense of alienation,” a bitter member of the Balochistan hierarchy reacted to a question on the province’s participation in the formulation of the agri package.

“The federation treats us like an enemy province. Besides, it was clearly a politically motivated initiative to bribe people into voting for PML-N candidates in the local body elections. No, we were not consulted on the kissan package,” said a PTI supporter in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s hierarchy.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, October 12th, 2015

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