THE Federal Committee on Agriculture is set to fix the targets for the winter crops for the 2015-16 season. While the committee does coordinate with the provinces to set the targets, the interaction is generally not so meaningful.

For example, the FCA and the Sindh government keep coming up with different sowing and production estimates that often remain un-reconciled.

Sindh found the FCA’s targets for the province for the 2015-16 kharif to be too ambitious, indicating that the committee didn’t do its proper homework. These targets were not achieved in the just-concluded summer crop season.

Provincial officials say Sindh’s point of view and assessment should be given due weight. The FCA is still fixing the targets, even though after the 18th amendment the subject falls under the domain of the provinces.

Sindh was given a production target of 4.4m bales by the FCA, whereas latest reports reaching the provincial agriculture department indicate that output would be around 3.4m bales. Sindh had fixed its own target of 4m bales keeping in view the fact that the cotton growers hadn’t been getting adequate prices for their crop over the last few years.

The cotton growers are not going for an extended crop, which they usually do to save the expenses associated with land preparations and for wheat cultivation etc.

The same is true for the target for paddy. The FCA had fixed the target at 781,000ha against Sindh’s 750,000ha. Reports say sowing on around 719,000ha has been completed and the drop in acreage is being attributed to rain-related damages to paddy nurseries. Agriculture officials say the FCA did not take into account the fact that the ban on the cultivation of rice in certain areas was being strictly enforced.

In the case of sugarcane, the committee had set the sowing target at 320,000ha and the production target at 19m tonnes for 2015-16. Actually, this will have to be achieved in the 2016-17 season, as sugarcane is a 14-17-month crop. Besides, the FCA again didn’t realise that the controversy over the official sugarcane price between factory owners and farmers was likely to impact the crop’s area of cultivation.

Comparatively, Sindh’s targets are more realistic. The provincial agriculture department examines specific factors, including the availability of farm inputs and irrigation water, before arriving at acreage estimates. The support price is another important factor.

The provincial government had fixed the wheat-sowing target at 992,000ha for the 2008-09 season but the area exceeded to 1.031m hectares primarily because of an increase in the crop’s support price to Rs950 from Rs625. The province has kept its sowing target unchanged for three years.

Now, for the 2015-16 season, Sindh itself is going to propose a 1.15m-hectare wheat sowing target and it expects the FCA to agree with it after due deliberations.

“It is essential for the growers to be motivated. For this, funding is required so that proper campaigns can be launched to convince them to go for this or that crop,” said an official. “Both the federal and provincial governments need to do things jointly through policy decisions to ensure that the production and sowing targets are met.”

The mere fixing of crops targets by the government doesn’t serve any useful purpose unless it is backed by serious efforts. For instance, the FCA wanted Sindh to sow wheat on 1.15m hectares and meet the production target of 4.2m tonnes last season after the federal government announced a support price of Rs1,300 per 40kg.

But before the crop’s harvest, the federal government surprisingly allowed a huge quantity of 800,000 tonnes to be imported from Ukraine. This showed that the two governments weren’t closely coordinating with each other.

The imported wheat was mostly sold in Karachi’s markets. The imported wheat stock forced the Sindh government to reduce its annual procurement target to 900,000 tonnes from 1.3m tonnes.

However, owing to the farmers’ pressure, the provincial government raised the procurement target by 200,000 tonnes, but by then the growers had already sold much of their crop at a lower price of around Rs1,100 in the market.

The farmers also lack capacity to store the surplus crop and are always hard pressed to dispose of their stocks to get money and prepare for sowing the next crop.

The targets set by the government do not help farmers, who see them as an annual ritual. But they are an important tool that could otherwise be effectively utilised if the government desires, says Mahmood Nawaz Shah.

He explained that the fixing of targets should be made part of the agriculture policy so that the federal or the provincial governments are able to take a decision on how to manage the domestic supply, demand and the export/import of the crops.

Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, October 26th , 2015

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