Pakistan is an agricultural economy and the sector contributes more than 19 per cent to national economy and employs 38.5 per cent of the labour. It is inculcated in the minds of children from childhood that the farmers, peasants and labourers are important but the tragedy is that in the last few years, the situation has changed and bread is important but the grower is useless.

Very few regions in the world have been blessed by nature with as many blessings as our country: from the most fertile soil of the world to the best weather as well as river, desert, sea, mountains, forest and snow. The official emblem of Pakistan, if you look at it, describes Pakistan as an agrarian economy as a whole but now we are far behind in all four crops in the state emblem.

The Pakistani farmer is one of the hardest working professionals in the world but even in the most modern and mechanised times, its sectoral contribution to the national GDP has fallen to just 18.9 per cent.

It is very unfortunate that Pakistan, despite being an agriculturally fertile country, is importing both agricultural inputs and products. Just look at the first months of this fiscal year, if exports increased by 25%, the increase in imports was 63% and most of the imports were petroleum, automobiles and food items.

What is the reason?

Probably financial politics where ordinary farmers do not have access. Wheat is the most widely grown and used commodity in Pakistan which is needed because it satiates the hunger of the poor, the rich, the soldier, the labourer, the judge, the prisoner and the beggar alike.

In the past few years, Pakistan has become the net importer of wheat due to various factors such as lack of research in increasing yields and insufficient support prices. Although the statistics always tells us that our wheat production is always record breaking to meet our national demand, but at the beginning of each year, with the help of the administration, wheat is procured at low costs from farmers at the behest of the government and then in the last months of the year there is a flour crisis which raises prices and the biggest problem emerges for the day labourers and the poor including the rural poor.

Closely related and a timely issue in this regard is that of urea. The government believes that there can be no shortage of fertiliser in Pakistan, especially urea fertiliser, because in the year 2021, there was a record production of urea and still 25,000 tons of it is being produced daily. Fertiliser companies are saying that there is ongoing smuggling and channel partners (dealers) of fertiliser companies in the markets are saying fertiliser is not available; so what should a farmer do here who is standing in lines for hours just to get a couple of bags after verifying himself as a farmer?

What will happen now?

This year, for the first time in many (last time in 2009), there is a big crisis of urea fertiliser. However, the crisis has emerged in Rabi instead of Kharif as the wheat crop has been gradually declining and yields have declined in the last few years.

Urea manufacturers in Pakistan say that the fertiliser sector should be deregulated, although I do not remember that any fertiliser will ever be sold in Pakistan at the announced price. The price has always been high for the farmers.

In the present time, before the sowing of the Rabi crop, the price of DAP reached Rs8,000 per bag and when wheat was sown the urea fertiliser first disappeared from the market and later was available at a price of Rs2,400 to 2,800 per bag instead of Rs1,768 per bag. The government has now decided to allow imports of urea to make its availability easier for farmers, but it remains to be seen how the imported urea will be available to farmers and at what price.

The people of Pakistan need to understand that last year the price of DAP was Rs4,000 at the time of sowing wheat and urea was also available at Rs1,400 per bag. Important to mention here that farmers are not paid employees nor do they have any business other than farming, so selling his previous crop saves money for his day to day expenses as well as the pre-finance of the next crop, but this year DAP price is double at Rs8,000 and urea is available at Rs2,500. So, due to increase in cost of diesel, electricity and general inflation, not only many farmers became indebted but also most of them could not even apply phosphorus fertiliser and now, as a result, wheat production is going to decline by 15 to 20% due to the urea crisis.

Supposedly, even if the farmer sells some of his assets and puts in fertilisers, the production cost will increase, which will ultimately be blamed on the farmer as to why he produced expensive wheat for the flour of the poor nation.

Time is running out. Already our trade deficit has been huge due to imports of sugar and wheat, pushing it up by a whopping 54 per cent! Given that food prices are at an 11 years high globally, the food bill will continue to increase and the burden on the common man will have to be passed directly or indirectly.

Remember that the farmers are not interested in claims, not in political announcements, not in news of smuggling, not in announcements of increasing fertiliser supply whether it is 30% or 300%. They just demand seeds, pesticides, fertilisers and other agricultural inputs available at the declared rates. Natural resources are already under pressure in Pakistan due to increasing population, climate change and urbanisation. This could lead to a food crisis in the future and could worsen the law and order situation in the coming months.

(The writer is a progressive farmer from Pakpattan)

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2022