THE Punjab Food Department has reportedly purchased 9.520 million tonnes of wheat from farmers till April 17, which is 25.73 per cent of the procurement target for 2023-24. The government had set a target of accumulating 28.4m tonnes of wheat for the current harvest, keeping in view the impact of climate change, devastating floods and the lack of new yields in the market. Also, there has been no relevant research output from the National Agriculture Research Centre.

The point of this whole exercise should be to store an essential commodity like wheat for domestic consumption first. It will be nice if the government chooses to make its intention public, and to explicitly clarify that the accumulated wheat is not going to be exported for short-term monetary gains. It will be ironic if we face wheat shortage later in the current fiscal year.

Reports say that despite weather-related adversaries, wheat-growers have been reaping a surprisingly high output in southern Punjab, especially in Rajanpur district. Everything is going great in the whole process as of now. However, pricing issues related to wheat purchasing have been reported from some districts in Punjab.

More than a few people recently died in an attempt to get hold of flour to feed their families. Such tragedies occurred owing to the manipulation engineered together by bureaucracy, capitalists and businesses.

To save lives of the masses, we have to devise a policy to make wheat supplies stable all through the year by way of proper storage. The government should export wheat only if Pakistan meets its own requirements for the whole year.

Omed Hajjana
Rajanpur

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2023