The wheat crisis

The government should have anticipated the brewing wheat crisis. Concerns were being raised for months, especially after the devastating 2022 floods. But the government still chose to foster the crisis till the last minute by neither announcing the wheat support price in time, nor arranging for its quick import. The unfortunate incident in Mirpurkhas, Sindh, where a man died in a stampede while attempting to buy flour at subsidised rates, highlights the government’s apathy and callous attitude towards the plight of common Pakistanis.

Once self-sufficient in wheat production, Pakistan has been hit by its frequent shortages for the past few years, mainly because of low yielding crops, natural calamities and the questionable policies of the successive governments. However, this time around, the wheat shortages are at their worst, resulting in skyrocketing prices of flour – the main staple diet of many Pakistanis. In the main urban centres, flour is being sold for Rs150-Rs160 per kg – the highest in the country’s history as inflation hovered at around 24.5 per cent in December, according to government figures.

The government’s decision to strike import deals with other countries, including 750,000 tonnes import of the Russian wheat, has come too late. But market pundits say that the arrival of around 60,000 tonnes of Russian wheat on January 9 at the Port Qasim will help address the problem of shortages in the coming days.

Going forward, Pakistan needs to focus on the challenge of attaining self-sufficiency in wheat production, which has more or less stagnated in recent years. This means Pakistan will have to invest in agriculture research and try to improve its per hectare yield from the current 2.5-3.0 tonnes to at least 4.0 as in neighbouring India. Experts say that Pakistan needs to double its wheat yield to six tonnes per hectare over the next 10 years to ensure national food security. For this, the country needs a national policy which is difficult to materialize, if not impossible, because of the controversial 18th amendment, which has made agriculture a provincial subject. Until the 18th amendment gets reviewed, the federal and provincial governments need to work in tandem to overcome the challenge. But under the current polarized politics of Pakistan, this smooth working relation is difficult to achieve.

The federal and provincial governments also need to review the mechanism of announcing the support price of wheat on which the opinion is divided. Our national and provincial assemblies, dominated by feudal lords, tend to dictate their respective governments to ensure legislation that is beneficial for large owners. The rural elite always manages to manipulate the support price of the commodity in their favour, which has an overall inflationary impact.

Federal Minister for National Food Security Tariq Bashir Cheema has rightly pointed out that the Sindh government set a “very high” support price of wheat at Rs4,000 per 40 kg, leading to a delay in the announcement of the same by the Centre.

The role of the middlemen and mill owners in maintaining the demand-supply equation and pricing of wheat flour is also mostly unregulated and controversial. Sadly, in the ongoing wheat crisis, the government failed to curb speculations that led to hoarding of flour at every level – from the millers to middlemen, and even at the retail level.  Under the 18th amendment, although the federal government is responsible for ensuring food security, it is like a toothless lion as both the agriculture sector and the price control mechanism falls under the ambit of the provincial governments. The federal government also has failed to curb wheat/flour smuggling to Afghanistan.

To mitigate the crisis in the near term, the government must step-up its game and intervene in the market by performing the functions of purchasing and selling wheat itself, instead of leaving this task to the middlemen and mill owners. The federal and provincial governments also need an effective price control mechanism and take measures to curb hoarding. But in the long-run, boosting per-hectare wheat yield and expanding the area of its cultivation is the only way forward. The current wheat and flour crisis should come as a wake-up call for all the stakeholders, who must act before it is too late.