Food insecurity and wheat shortage

Shehbaz Sharif seems not to be believing that he is no more the chief minister of Punjab as he now sits in the Prime Minister’s office.

In a public gathering of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) in Basham, KP, he was overwhelmed, announcing that he will sell his clothes to provide cheap flour in the province. He also announced that Punjab will give wheat to KP and pressed on the KP Chief Minister Mehmood Khan to give subsidy on flour.

His announcement shows how far removed from reality he is, which is not an ideal position for a prime minister. On the face of it, the announcement is pulp fiction that is distinct even in today’s movies.

Flour crisis is boiling in the country. The data released by the Prime Minister Office (PMO) shows that “wheat production is projected to be 26.173m tonnes against a target of 28.89m tonnes while the estimated consumption would be around 30.79m tonnes.” It means the country needs at least three million tonnes of wheat to import. But before we look at the import factor, we need to see how this wheat shortage has a different impact on different parts of the country.

Availability of wheat is one thing, people’s access to it another. A report on food security compiled by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), mentions, “Alarmingly, of the 36.9 percent of the households in Pakistan labelled as “food insecure”, 18.3 percent face “severe” food insecurity.” Situation in Punjab and GB is less alarming than Sindh and Balochistan. This high level of food insecurity can cost Pakistan US $ 7.8 billion every year.

This data does not match with the reality that Pakistan is world’s 8th largest wheat and fourth largest milk producer. It also does not bode well with the fact that the country is among those seven countries that make up for two thirds of the world’s hungry population.

The SBP report was published in 2019. If we look at the current crisis and established facts, we will understand that the problem is not in production line. At that time, Khusro Bakhtiar, then minister for food security, decided to export the wheat that was preserved in government warehouses. The next year, Pakistan was hit by torrential rains and hailstorms due to climate change. With all the reserved wheat gone, the country had no option, but to import wheat.

A year after that, in 2021, the government continued paying little attention to food security and the then prime minister would publically say that he was not in office to control food prices as this goal was lower than the higher agenda he was presumed to be pursuing. Battered by loses, farmers were also hit by lack of fertilizers, especially urea and DAP. Nobody heard their cries and after much delay, the government announced a support price for wheat in 2021.

For this year, the production has further plummeted. Now that the support price has been set at Rs. 2,200, wheat is not available. As a matter of fact, farmers divide wheat in three portions. First portion they keep for their families and friends, the second goes to rural market and the third reaches mills in urban areas.

But before it reaches urban areas, much of it is purchased by hoarders and smugglers. Why so? Wheat price in international market is about 1,000 rupees more than in Pakistan. Similarly, there is a difference between wheat price in Punjab and KP. Hence, wheat is smuggled from Punjab to KP and from KP to Afghanistan and Iran in some cases.

Tariq Bashir Cheema is currently the Food Security Minister. His predecessor Fakhar Imam was a weak man with little control on hoarders and smugglers. Imam’s cousin Hussain Jehania Gardezi was Agriculture Minister in Punjab. Both these cousins are big landholders and in the business of agriculture farming. They could have changed the situation knowing agriculture well had they been interested in food security as much as in their own agriculture farms. The then prime minister Imran Khan had to come up himself against hoarders and smugglers because of their incompetence.

Tariq Bashir Cheema had left his mark as the housing minister in the previous government and is expected to maintain his reputation as Minister for Food Security. District administrations are the engine to stop illegal sale and purchase of wheat. They must work on war footing to stop the crisis from snowballing. Already, flour price has gone up by Rs. 10 per kilogram. The government should make sure that wheat is purchased from farmers and supplied to mills. A mechanism needs to be put in place to see that the mills have produced flour from the wheat they have been supplied.

Provision and sale of this floor in the market at the price that the government has set needs to be ensured. Minister Cheema should know that even if he succeeds in stopping hoarding and smuggling by engaging district administrations, he will be chasing the uphill task of importing wheat. Usually, Pakistan and other countries import wheat from Ukraine and Russia, but both the countries are currently at war. Imports from India are also hindered due to their government’s hate mongering. Hence, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif should do more than selling his clothes to resolve this gigantic crisis that he inherited from his predecessors.

The writer teaches mediatization at IIUI