LAHORE: Punjab has achieved 59pc of its wheat sowing target of 16 million acres by Wednesday and the provincial authorities hope to achieve over 90pc of the target in November – the most opportune time for a healthy yield.

According to the Crop Reporting Service report, compiled on Nov 15, the barani (rain-fed) belt has led the sowing drive by hitting 95pc of its 1.6 million acres. The rice belt is teetering at 45pc, cotton belt at 66pc and mixed areas at 48pc.

The Punjab had set itself almost an impossible target of 25.6 million tonnes this year at an average production 40 maund per acre. In the last 75 years, the maximum production it had achieved was 33.89 maund per acre last year.

It had so much confidence in itself that it didn’t raise sowing target, rather cut it by more than half a million acre (16.57 million acre last year to 16 million acre this year) but added four million tonnes to the production target – 21 million tonnes plus last year to 25.60 million this year.

Listing the basis of provincial optimism, an official of the agriculture department says that the National Agriculture Emergency Programme of Wheat is being implemented to support the farmers through subsidised seeds, weedicides, demonstration plots, yield competitions, farmers’ gatherings through the project and through the private sector.

Secondly, the official says, availability of quality urea (2.3 million tonnes), DAP (0.8 million tonnes) in Rabi in sufficient quantity and quality of weedicides and irrigation supplies is being ensured. The Punjab government has notified support price at Rs4,000 per maund, which is very attractive by any stretch of imagination. All these factors, along with timely sowing, are generating optimism, the official adds.

The farmers also think that market realities now favour wheat. The growers suffered losses on almost all alternative crops, which had encroached upon the wheat area in the last few years.

Maize ditched its growers when its rates plummeted to Rs2,200 per maund against calculations of at least Rs3,000 this year, noted Abad Khan – a farmer from central Punjab. Similarly, sunflower also saw rates crashing to Rs6,500 per maund, which took its commercial sheen off when compared to wheat.

Sugarcane is yet another outcompeted crop by wheat with its high rates. The market forces are dictating the wheat production, not any official effort, he insists and says that fertiliser is not available to farmers as the department claims. Where available, at what rate?

It is the failure of competing crops, which is going to favour wheat. However, the federal and provincial targets are impossible to achieve and everyone knows it.

A federal planner, when asked about such an ambitious target, bordering on foolishness, says the new census put national population at 241.49m. What the Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) did is simple mathematics, it multiplied the new population figure with average consumption and declared the target, he says.

“It also knew that its targets are never met in the past because they were never backed by any sort of planning. What would happen if yet another year is missed? Nothing! This explains the entire planning,” he says.

Published in Dawn, November 17th, 2023