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WHEN Pakistan’s farmers venture out from late April onwards to reap their wheat crop, many will lament their sharply sliding incomes of the past year and dim prospects for the future.
For the moment, the officially sanctioned support price for wheat remains unchanged from a year ago, giving comfort to the finance ministry’s ‘baboos’ with a history of opposing higher pay-offs to farmers on the pretext that this will further stretch an already out-of-control budget deficit.
The baboo school of thought will make you believe that wheat farmers are already well endowed given that they receive higher returns than their counterparts in other countries. Yet, the argument is clearly half baked, self-serving and detached from the overall reality.
The crisis surrounding farmers in the country has grown relentlessly in the past year, causing distress to the country’s largest provider of income for its ever-growing population. Agriculture makes up for just over 20pc of Pakistan’s GDP and according to official figures accounts for employing more than 45pc of the workforce. Given the population bulge across Pakistan’s rural heartland, the numerical size of the folks at the end of the receiving stick could be much larger.
The crisis surrounding our farmers has grown relentlessly.
In the past year, prices of key commodities crashed as a consequence of a global downturn following the sharp decline in oil prices. As farmers in country after country faced the brunt, Pakistan stood out as an exception among those who were not jolted enough to adopt emergency steps.
The price of the once-famed paddy used to make the world famous Basmati rice fell like a rock, down by 30 to 40pc from a year before. Meanwhile, the latest numbers from the Pakistan Cotton Ginners’ Association suggest a more than 30pc drop in the incoming stocks of cotton — once the symbol of identity for the cotton belt across southern Punjab. A half-baked official cover-up will make you believe that farmers in part have already been compensated by reduced diesel prices. But diesel is just one component among a range of products that go into sowing a crop.
Criminality in Pakistan’s rural areas is not just about matters pursued aimlessly by a dysfunctional police force. The farming community is equally hit by issues ranging from widespread adulteration of pesticides and fertilizers. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence suggests that village folks have suffered from the wretched load-shedding more than their urban counterparts, as the ruling structure chose to keep large cities calm during the worst days of a continuing energy crisis.
Within this bleak outlook, Pakistan’s farmers have a right to ask if there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. For the moment, the answer must be in the non-affirmative. In sharp contrast to the likes of Finance Minister Ishaq Dar often patting himself on the back on matters like the soaring foreign currency reserves of the State Bank, agriculture suffers from the virtual absence of a high-profile champion in the ruling structure. By now, it is amply clear that the much-publicised prime minister’s farm package of last year has simply failed to stem the rot.
At the same time, the much-talked-about and high-profile infrastructure projects such as metro-buses or the Lahore ‘Orange’ train line, fail to convincingly answer two equally compelling questions. First, isn’t this just the wrong set of priorities as sectors including agriculture remain increasingly mired in possibly the worst crisis in the nation’s history? Second, isn’t it simply not wise to spend, spend and spend on infrastructure without a radical uplift to an increasingly crashing tax collection structure. Ultimately, notwithstanding the utility of the motorways, metro buses and fancy trains, the country will be left more indebted while the suffering of almost half of its population will only continue.
For the moment, however, there is little hope of a radical shift in the focus from fancy urban projects to our sinking rural economy. Though the farming community has the numbers, they have yet to vent their anger politically. The so-called representatives of the farmer community across the federal and provincial legislatures have yet to speak out forcefully for their constituents, reinforcing the impression that their voices have been subdued under the weight of partisan politics.
And yet, even without forceful voices to defend their cause, the crisis surrounding the farmers will eventually take its toll in one of a number of ways. To begin with, the present trends have naturally endangered the country’s food security in an unprecedented way.
The images from just last year when potato farmers dumped their stocks in central Lahore to protest crashing prices are indeed a case in point. Maybe others at the receiving end will eventually be forced to emulate potato growers in the hope of being heard across our apparently deaf power corridors.
The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist.
Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2016
