Agricultural alert

The backbone of Pakistan’s economy is collapsing, according to the people most closely tied to it. During a press conference in Multan last Sunday, the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) raised warnings of an imminent collapse of the agricultural sector due to years of neglect and mismanagement. The organisation’s president claimed that farmers lacked the capital to cultivate the next crop and that they had not been paid fair prices for their produce for the past two years. Wheat growers, in particular, have lost Rs2.2 trillion over this period due to low prices and high production costs, while cotton production has halved and rice exports have declined by an estimated 11 per cent. The PKI president appears to pin much of the blame for this agricultural downturn on the government, criticising how farmers are being charged exorbitant electricity rates of Rs40 to Rs50 while the government celebrates minor reductions in flour prices. He also dismissed the recent relief packages for farmers and demanded a guaranteed 25 per cent profit margin on crops, lower electricity tariffs and fair prices for produce. The complaints about farmers not getting a fair price for the food they produce might strike some as strange, given that the prices prevailing in most markets are far higher than government rates. If that money is not going to the farmers, then where is it going?

Regardless of the answer to this question or who is to blame for the precarious situation farmers now find themselves in, the assertion that Pakistan’s agricultural sector is indeed in deep trouble and that as goes agriculture, so goes the rest of the country’s economy is mostly true. Agriculture accounts for almost a quarter of the nation’s GDP and over a third of its total employment. With this in mind, the country’s leadership needs to get on top of what seems like a developing agricultural crisis before it becomes a national economic crisis. Any viable solution to the problem would have to begin with lowering farmers’ costs of production and ensuring that a greater share of what people part with at the markets actually reaches the people producing food rather than being pocketed by those in the middle. The latter has long been a problem in not just Pakistan but throughout South Asia, an unfortunate legacy of its unfair colonial land distribution system. It must also be noted that, while urban Pakistan has quietly become one of the world’s largest solar markets, the rural areas where food is produced still struggle for basic electricity, even though this is arguably where it is needed most.

How can a country neglect the very areas keeping the economy on its feet? But, aside from policy shortfalls, the nation also has to contend with the fact that climate change is making farming much harder throughout the Global South. Unusually hot weather followed by erratic, unseasonal rains have combined to create formidable challenges for farmers in the developing world and ones that they will not be able to surmount without significant national and international support. As such, farmers and agricultural policy ought to be a key focus, if not the forefront, of how Pakistan engages with the upcoming COP29. Should the agricultural crisis be allowed to linger, sugar will not be the only staple that Pakistan has to import at exorbitant rates.