The Risk Before the Harvest

Summary

• The real wheat-policy question is whether the state can ask a farmer to commit land, credit and six months of effort to its most important food crop while leaving his expected return, water supply and the cost of essential inputs uncertain.
• They may not abandon wheat altogether, but they can cut fertiliser application or compromise on seed quality.
• Food security is not merely a national production target or a figure in government wheat stocks.

AI Generated Summary

Food security begins before the seed goes into the ground. So does policy.

This week, the Federal Committee on Agriculture could not finalise Rabi crop targets, waiting instead for an “illustrative price” for wheat. On seed, officials offered assurances that availability would be “satisfactory”, without disclosing quantities or a season-specific price. A day earlier, the Indus River System Authority approved an anticipated 22 percent water shortage for Punjab and Sindh.

The farmer cannot wait for these uncertainties to disappear. His land is approaching its sowing window.

The real wheat-policy question is whether the state can ask a farmer to commit land, credit and six months of effort to its most important food crop while leaving his expected return, water supply and the cost of essential inputs uncertain.

That commitment has become considerably more expensive. Year-on-year comparisons show DAP fertiliser and nitrophosphate about 25 percent dearer, and granular single superphosphate up more than 40 percent. Urea and calcium ammonium nitrate have risen by about 10 percent. High-speed diesel has climbed from Rs277 per litre last October to almost Rs395, an increase of nearly 43 percent.

Consider what those increases mean for a single acre. At unchanged application rates, a farmer using one to two bags of DAP, two bags of urea and an illustrative 20 litres of diesel faces approximately Rs6,500 to Rs10,000 in additional expenditure compared with last year’s prices. That excludes seed, weedicide, hired machinery, labour and additional groundwater pumping. The investment begins now. The return will not come for another six months.

The National Fertilizer Development Centre has previously linked declining fertiliser consumption to poor farm economics. When expected returns deteriorate, farmers rationally reduce their exposure. They may not abandon wheat altogether, but they can cut fertiliser application or compromise on seed quality. The acreage remains on the books, but the potential harvest has already been diminished.

This is the danger concealed by national acreage targets. A farmer can sow the same land while investing less in every acre. Government statistics may record the intended area under wheat, but they cannot capture the productive potential quietly surrendered through inadequate fertilisation, missed irrigation or inferior seed.

Food security begins with a private decision.

Somewhere in Punjab or Sindh, a farmer will look at a field and decide what to plant, how much to invest and how much risk he can afford. The state may describe wheat as strategic. Committees may announce national targets. Debates may rage over support prices. But none of these administrative acts plants a single acre. A farmer does.

He makes that decision through an arithmetic less sentimental than the national conversation. He knows what fertiliser, diesel, weed control and labour will cost. He also knows that his canal system is entering Rabi with a substantial anticipated shortage.