WHEAT harvesting has commenced in the lower Sindh region but the provincial government has not yet fixed a procurement target for this year’s (2018-19) wheat crop.

Sindh is presently said to have a million tonne of carry-over wheat from 2017-18 which is being released to flour mills and chakki owners. Last year the Sindh government had fixed a wheat purchase target of 1.4m tonnes which was met by the food department.

The federal government has allowed the export of 0.5m tonnes of carry-over wheat from last season.

According to Sindh food officials, the province is finalising the export of around 150,000 tonnes of wheat while around 200,000 tonnes will be released to flour mills and chakki owners. This will deplete overall stocks to around 700,000 tonnes by the time the new crop’s procurement starts.

Of total wheat production, Sindh usually contributes around 13 per cent in area sown and around 14.7pc in national production. The province’s average yield per acre in 2017-18 was recorded at 32.9 maunds as per estimates of the provincial agriculture department.

Given the gradual rise in the flows of the river Indus, irrigation water availability has lately improved, rekindling hope among farmers of an increase in grain formation as well as per acre productivity

Punjab remains the main producer of the staple food with a 74pc contribution in total annual production. The remaining 12pc is jointly produced in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

Sindh missed its wheat sowing target of 1.15m hectares by 11pc this fiscal year owing to water shortages, while last year as well only 3.6m tonnes of crop were produced against a production target of 4.2m tonnes.

Given the gradual rise in the flows of the river Indus, irrigation water availability has lately improved at the province’s barrages. The improved flows, coupled with recent rainfall, have rekindled hope among farmers of an increase in grain formation as well as per acre productivity.

The lower Sindh region has an early sowing and harvesting trend for crops. Mirpurkhas has started wheat harvesting. Growers in the area are selling their produce at Rs1,150/40kg to traders against a support price of Rs1,300 in the absence of procurement which will begin around April.

Growers who cultivate early are hard-pressed to sell their crop to both traders and middlemen, and often face exploitation. They have to cash in on irrigation water flows and sell their crop to middlemen who have loaned them inputs for cultivation. One could say these farmers mortgage their crop to market players even before they have cultivated. Traders, for example, buy their crop at low rates after adjusting loans.

Every year fears of flawed wheat procurement haunt wheat producers. They end up as major losers amidst an unholy alliance between food officials and traders or middlemen which deprives genuine small- and medium-farmers of their right to avail subsidy (support price of Rs1,300/40kg) on their wheat crop.

Gunny bags are intentionally denied to such growers while the big landowners get them relatively more easily thanks to their connections. But big landowners usually don’t grow wheat as they prefer either orchard farming or growing sugar cane.

“A trader purchases wheat at Rs1,150 per maund and a gunny bag at Rs100 per bag. While he may earn Rs375 on 2.5 maunds of wheat, after deducting the Rs100 of the gunny bag, his actual take home is a mere Rs275,” says Nadeem Shah, a wheat grower from Matiari. He’s concerned about the government’s slackness in starting the tendering process for gunny bags which need at least a month’s time to become available.

Further, the Sindh government has been buying plastic gunny bags which, from a farmers’ point of view, don’t store the produce as effectively as jute bags do.

Sindh has an official wheat storage capacity of 750,000 tonnes. The remaining quantum is kept in rented premises of flour mills. The same goes for Punjab where, according to analyst Ibrahim Mughal, around 3.6-3.8m tonnes of crop is procured every year out of a total production of around 19.6m tonnes.

Providing a subsidy on the wheat crop, according to a former director of the Sindh food authority, remains misplaced. “It reaches neither the farmer nor the consumer. A farmer by and large doesn’t avail the subsidy at the time of crop procurement because food inspectors are always at a liberty to buy from the middlemen by providing bags to them instead of the actual growers. Flour mill owners purchase wheat in every season,” he said.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 4th, 2019