The government had fixed the wheat purchasing rate and was supposed to issue wheat bags directly to farmers, but some food department officials are allegedly selling these bags to small-scale traders (phi) in exchange for kickbacks. As a result, phi-walls are purchasing wheat from growers at lower rates than the government’s prescribed rate of PKR 100,000 [USD 360] per 100 kilograms,” Akram Khaskheli, President of the Sindh-based Hari Welfare Association told Dialogue Earth.
Khaskheli further stated that if the mismanagement of the situation by the government continued, it would lead to the loss of precious crops, further deteriorating food insecurity despite the availability of wheat.
The large procurement of wheat by the government usually about 20% of production, or 5.6 million tonnes at a minimum support price assures a buyer of some of the produce and helps set a market rate. But the current issue also involves climate change, and how it is pushing Pakistan’s agricultural sector into crisis.
The current crisis is linked to the massive floods that hit Pakistan in July-September 2022 and inundated a third of the country’s districts. A host of climatic factors including a warming ocean coincided to create the extreme rainfall event, which moderately or severely affected 15% of Pakistan’s cropland.
floods stagnated for six months
In areas like Johi in the Dadu district in the Sindh province, the impact lasted many seasons. The huge amount of water from the floods stagnated for six months after the initial disaster. A barrage had also collapsed, and could not be made functional for two years.
Forty-four-year-old Talib Gadehi and his brothers, who together own 350 acres (141 hectares) of agricultural land in the area, told Dialogue Earth that most of them struggled to cultivate their land for four consecutive seasons over two years.
The barrage collapse affected an estimated 100,000 acres (40,469 hectares), Gadehi said, and cultivable land has become barren. “This situation has resulted in mass migration [out of the area]