ISLAMABAD: Although the wheat sowing season is due to start within the next few weeks, the Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) was unable to set production targets for Rabi crops during a meeting on Wednesday.

The meeting was chaired by the Minister for National Food Security Rana Tanveer Hussain. A press release of the ministry said the targets for Rabi crops would be finalised after the “announcement of an illustrative price for wheat”.

The prime minister recently tasked an eight-member committee with suggesting policy actions for the wheat sowing season in order to ensure adequate wheat production.

The committee is headed by the prime minister’s adviser on inter-provincial coordination and includes the minister for national food security, coordinator to the PM on agriculture, provincial agriculture ministers, provincial chief secretaries and chairman of the Pakistan Banking Association.

Rana Tanveer Hussain said: “We are conscious of the challenges faced by our farmers due to rising input, energy and transportation costs. The government is taking measures to ensure affordable inputs and remunerative prices, including an appropriate wheat illustrative price.”

About the availability of water for irrigating Rabi crops, the press release spoke of an anticipated shortage of 22 per cent for Punjab and Sindh. Provinces are allocated 29.18 MAF of water.

The Meteorological Department informed the committee that soil moisture stress was expected in October and November due to below-normal rains over the last three months. The situation, however, is likely to improve soon due to above-normal rains forecast for the next two months.

Seed availability

About the availability of seeds during the Rabi season, the federal seed certification department informed the committee that availability of certified seeds during Rabi would be “satisfactory”.

The committee reviewed the performance of seven Kharif crops, noting that sugarcane, rice, maize, mungbean and chillies showed an increase in production over the previous year.

The committee was informed that sugarcane production for 2025-26 is provisionally estimated at 97.2 million tonnes from an area of 1.358m hectares, showing an increase of 18.5pc and 21.1pc in area and production, respectively, over the targets fixed by the FCA.

Rice production for 2025-26 is estimated at 10.182m tonnes from an area of 3.902m hectares, showing an increase of 28.4pc in area.

Maize production is estimated at 9.97m tonnes from an area of 1.83m hectares, showing an increase of 21pc in area and 3.2pc in production over the target fixed by the FCA.

Mungbean production is estimated at 171,000 tonnes from an area of over 225,000 hectares, an increase of 32.3pc in area and 14.8pc in production over the FCA targets.

Chillies also recorded growth in area, production and yield as compared to the previous year.

Total availability of urea during 2026-27 is estimated at 3.95m tonnes, comprising 765,000 tonnes of carryover stock and 3.18m tonnes of domestic production. Urea offtake is expected to be around 3.5m tonnes.

The total availability of DAP will be 766,000 tonnes against an expected offtake of 838,000 tonnes. The gap between supply and demand in DAP will be filled through imports by the private sector.

The State Bank allocated indicative agricultural credit disbursement target of Rs3,062 billion for the fiscal year 2026-27, which was 19pc higher than the preceding year’s disbursement of Rs2,573bn.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2026