THE biggest question mark lurking before the Punjab food planners these days is where the over two million tons of tradable surplus of wheat has gone.

Administrative measures involving law-enforcing agencies, policy reversals, increased commodity financing and direct raids on farmers and middlemen’s stocks have failed to deliver the desired results so far, going by the pace and volume of official wheat procurement drive in the province.

The government has, as usual, rushed to order imports ignoring the domestic factors responsible for the fiasco and letting the guilty go scot-free. While import of wheat is necessary, digging out the internal root-cause of the problem is equally important.

Target: The Punjab Food Department has so far procured only 2.1 million tons against its target of 4.3 million tons that includes procurement of around three million tons for Punjab, one million tons on behalf of the NWFP government and 300,000 for Balochistan. The Punjab Food Department was once talking about procuring over 4.5 million tons for the province alone. But, its procurement drive has nose dived; arrivals at its procurement centres have dropped to less than 50,000 tons (a paltry quantity during the peak procurement period) after touching over 100,000 tons for a few days.

The federal procurement agency, the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (Passco), has been able to procure around 0.7 million tons against its target of 1.5 million tons, despite increasing price twice by Rs10 per 40 kg to attract the farmers but failed.

Estimates: For the last 60 years, Pakistan has been calculating its wheat requirements and tradable surplus by two formulae: one is population-based and the other is based on market mechanism. This year, private market and official procurement situations defy these 60-year old tested formulae. Some two to four million tons of wheat somehow is still lying outside these formulae.

The country has adopted internationally accepted population-based formula, which says that every individual consumes around 124 kilograms of wheat annually. If we deduct the wheat required for the rural population based on this formula, the rest of it should come to the city markets for trading.

The current situation does not fit the frame. According to the Punjab Agriculture Department, the province has produced 16.3 million tons of wheat against the target of 18.5 million tons. To begin with, it concedes a crop reduction of around 2.2 million tons.

If 16.3 million tons production is taken as a baseline and the Punjab population at 100 million, the rural segment at the most comes around 700 million people who should not have kept more than 8.68 million tons of wheat. If seed requirements scientifically calculated at around 850,000 tons are also deducted, the figure comes to around 9.5 million tons. That means 6.8 million tons of wheat should have been in the market for trading. But the federal and provincial agencies have been successful in procuring only 2.8 million tons so far.

The other formula, based on historical market trends and calculations, becomes equally irrelevant when given a reality check. According to this formula, wheat growers keep around 70 per cent of the total production for feed and seed and the rest 30 per cent is traded in the market. That means out of 16.3 million tons, around 4.89 million tons of wheat should have become tradable surplus.

Confusion: Interesting theories are being cooked up by officials explaining the “missing” wheat stock. According to the Punjab Food Department officials, the farmers are hoarding the produce. But a majority of the farmers do no have holding capacity, which, in the past, has regularly led to price crash during harvesting season.

How can these poor farmers build such a holding capacity and that too beyond the sight of official agencies, which had been raiding every possible place for recovery of stock? Even individual buyers, who wanted to purchase wheat for domestic consumption, have not been able to do so for the fear of confiscation.

The millers think the investors have paid the farmers for their crop and asked them to keep the wheat within the confines of their homes as no agency would break in to check domestic storage. Now a question arises, can farmers hoard two to four million tons in their homes? The figure, interestingly, is more than the total indoor stocking capacity of the government agencies put together.

Unable to trace the hoarded wheat, the government has resorted to an easy solution: import the deficit amount. Even if over 2.5 million tons of wheat is imported to meet domestic food requirements, it is equally important to look into factors that affected wheat production this year.

Who delayed announcing the procurement price, and how much this delay affected the final yield. It should also look into the factors that caused 50 per cent drop in the use of phosphate fertiliser – its usage came down by 9.8 million bags in a single year. How the country missed the target for area under sowing by more than a staggering 1.2 million acres. The past mistakes and blunders identified should be avoided in future.

The Punjab government threw private sector out of procurement with every conceivable means – legal, administrative and financial. But the crisis has only worsened. Instead of being reactive to crisis on yearly basis, the government should find long-term solutions to such problems.