LAHORE, May 21 (APP): Where climate change impacts are hitting countries across the globe raising food security issues for many, its making extremely important for countries having rich agricultural potential to not only cater needs for their own population but exporting to other counties as well having less agricultural yields to avoid food crisis.
Pakistan’s major and most important national food security policy goal is to grow ample wheat, not only to meet its consumption needs but also create a surplus for buffer stocks and export.
To achieve this, the government annually sets national sowing, output and procurement targets. This policy yielded good results and the country more than doubled its wheat production in between 1990 to 2011. Statistics tell that since then the wheat production remained around 26m tonnes, peaking to above 27m tonnes in 2021.
Punjab being the major province to grow wheat had its cultivation target for year 2022-23, at around 16.48 million acres, however wheat production this year topped 27.5 million metric tons, the highest in the last 10 years, despite the challenges posed by heavy rains and floods last year.
The record wheat production was possible by the grace of Allah Almighty, quality seeds, uninterrupted supply of fertiliser and timely decisions of the government.
“Wheat crop production was recorded at over 27 million metric tons this year and hopefully the all-important commodity would not be imported this year,” Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, Chaudhary Tariq Bashir Cheema said while speaking in “Meet the Press” at Bahawalpur the other day.
He said in the past, Pakistan used to export wheat to other countries, but later it imported wheat due to several reasons including climate changes.
The minister said due to flash floods in Sindh province last year, we feared that we would have to import wheat to cater needs of the country, but this year, we achieved record production of wheat.
He said the government had been providing subsidy to farmers’ community. “The government set the support price of wheat at Rs 3,900 per 40 kilograms in order to encourage peasants,” he added.
There were 2.1m tonnes of grain carryover stocks, taking the overall availability of the commodity during the year 2023-24 to 29.6m tonnes, reducing the import requirement to around 1m tonnes.
After wheat harvesting, the next challenge was its procurement and in this connection, the Punjab Food Department was vigorously carrying out a wheat procurement campaign in response to an unexpectedly bountiful harvest and achieve its set procurement target of 3.5 MMT.
The government has so far procured over 4.902 million metric tons (MMT) of wheat under the grain-procurement campaign for the year 2023-24 against the set target of 7.8 MMT to fulfill the local consumptions and maintain the strategic reserves in the country.
As per official procurement data from Punjab alone, so far 3534861 metric tonnes of wheat had been procured till May 18, from all districts of Punjab, while as many as 4334049 gunny bags had been issued in all districts across the province.
Punjab Food department officials told that the procurement campaign would continue till the completion of target as directed by the government. Many farmers were reporting yields of more than 50 maunds per acre, compared to the national average of 32 maunds.
“Despite the climate change-related challenges, heavy rains and catastrophic floods in the country, the local wheat output during the current season was estimated at 27.5 MMT, which was the highest in the last 10 years,” said Food Security Commissioner in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research Imtiaz Ali Gopang.
Talking to APP, he said so far about 63 to 70 percent of the assigned procurement targets for the current season were accomplished and the grain procurement drive across the crop-producing areas was in full swing.
When asked about wheat procurement in Sindh, Gopang said the province had completed about 46 percent of its procurement targets and procured about 640,629 metric tons of wheat as compared to the set targets of 1.400 MMT.
The food security commissioner further informed that the wheat procurement task was completed by 36 percent in Balochistan, whereas Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) completed 46 percent of its procurement.
“Balochistan has so far procured about 29,632 metric tons of wheat against its set targets of 100,000 metric tons and PASSCO procured 826,033 MMT as compared to the targets of 1.800 million metric tons,” he added.
It is worth mentioning here that wheat crop was sown over 21.942 million acres for producing about 28.37 MMT of wheat during crop season 2022-23 for fulfilling the local staple food requirements and maintaining strategic reserves.
Such a turnaround in wheat projections shows how wheat plants miraculously withstood wet-weather-related damages to the crop, thanks to consistently cool temperatures and bright sunny days.
The wheat crop production can further be increased through changes in the production system, such as reduced tillage, increased use of certified seeds, and a better match between fertiliser applications and soils.
There was also massive potential to reduce on-farm and off-farm crop losses through improved harvesting, bulk handling and storage in modern silos.