Food for thought

One of the principal factors behind Jamli's falling out with his party leadership was his handling of the wheat crisis and the plan earlier this year to import half a million tons of this commodity.
Since Jamali was convinced that the reported shortages had their roots in distributional problems and profiteering rather than low production, his pressure on the Punjab government to allow inter-provincial movement of wheat did not go down well with that province's legislators, who feared a negative backlash in case flour prices in their constituencies rose to the levels prevailing in the rest of the Federation.
Both the problems of wheat supply and Jamali's relations with his political mentors were compounded by the former PM's decision to entrust the import to PASSCO, a government-owned storage and distribution organisation with little import experience, instead of the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP), which reported to Jamali's arch political rival heading the Ministry of Commerce.
While it is not necessary here to recount the facts involved in that transaction, it needs to be noted that the Australian Wheat Board, despite its earlier protestations, has eventually conceded that its wheat was indeed infected with fungus, though not with the strain identified by Pakistan's inspectors.
One of Chaudhry Shujaat's first decisions as Prime Minister has been to issue a directive for the import of one million tons of wheat, with half of the quantity to be arranged for immediately.
The official announcement in this regard is at pains to emphasise that the import is intended for the creation of buffer stocks, but doubling of the import quantity indicates there is substance in the apprehensions expressed by many experts that there was indeed a major shortfall in wheat production this year.
Hopefully, this time round TCP will resist the Ministry of Food and Agriculture's insistence that the imported wheat should be of a quality known as "soft white." Compliance would not be a sound decision for two reasons.
Firstly, it would effectively restrict the souring from the Anglo-Saxon wheat exporting trio of Australia, Canada and the USA., enabling the major international traders to create cartels and fix prices to the disadvantage of Pakistan, particularly in the availability of a hundred million dollar US Department of Agriculture credit for the purchase of US agricultural commodities.
Secondly, since it is well known that this year Europe has reaped a bumper wheat harvest, resulting in a large export surplus and favourable prices, by inviting quotations also for red wheat, the TCP can enlarge its souring options and benefit from lower prices.
It should draw comfort from the fact that in the mid-90's, when wheat imports were open to the private sector, their preference was for wheat of French origin, both for reasons of price and quality.
This was not surprising, because the French wheat is regularly imported by Egypt, Iraq and the GCC countries where the staple flat bread is similar to that consumed here in Pakistan.
Considering that the question of stability in wheat supply appears, quite correctly, to be uppermost among the priorities of the new Prime Minister, it is food for thought that the present import may not be a one-off arrangement (historically Pakistan has been a net importer of wheat) and that it is important for Pakistan to diversify its sources of supply.
It is no secret that Pakistan's production of wheat is not keeping pace with internal demand. Each year, the ratio of population to cultivated land changes adversely, without corresponding increases in productivity.
Over the past twenty years, while the population has almost doubled, the area under wheat cultivation has increased by only twenty-three percent and the yield per acre by only twenty-six percent.
The management and supply of irrigation water, on which depend eighty per cent of agricultural production, are becoming more problematical, both at the macro and farm levels.
The absence of a system of co-operatives and of proper storage facilities further hinder production and productivity, by creating cash flow problems, and dependency on middlemen, for the farmer, especially those with small holdings.
Moreover, there is shortage of quality seeds, there is much scope for improvement in fertiliser availability and, importantly, farmers need to be trained in methodical usage of their irrigation, cropping and farming-input resources to optimise productivity.
Of course, several sincere efforts are known to be under way to address these problems, but so far the results remain unsatisfactory, evidenced by the facts that, although globally Pakistan ranks among the top ten producers of wheat in terms of quantity, it ranks a disappointing sixtieth in productivity, ie yield per acre.
Therefore, while we may have some good crop years when there is favourable weather, unless the eating habits of the population change to other cereals, the prognosis is for increased dependence on wheat imports.
Such a situation needs to be managed with forethought. A nation's political independence rests largely on its economic independence, and food autarky is a basic requirement for achieving the latter.
Regrettably, Pakistan's quest for self sufficiency in its basic grain has not been far-sighted, losing its way during the 1950s and 1960s, when there was a reliance on the PL-480 funds that allowed Pakistan to pay in local currency for wheat imports from the USA.
This ready access to imports without recourse to hard currency encouraged Pakistan to shift the bias of its agricultural production in favour of cash crops such as cotton and sugarcane. By comparison, India, which did not receive PL-480 funds, from being chronically short in food production has, over the same period, become a surplus producer (wheat productivity in Indian Punjab is twice that of Pakistan's).
Even Iran, which was traditionally dependent on imported wheat, since cutting off its food ties with the USA twenty years ago has transformed itself into an exporter of wheat.
Whether the shift in emphasis on cash crops has been wholly beneficial for Pakistan is a debatable point.
Although almost sixty percent of Pakistan's export income is derived from cotton, because these exports are directed principally to the EU and the USA, the narrowness of the customer base makes it hard to deflect these countries' political pressures.
Locally the cotton economy has enriched large-holding farmers and textile millers, and many in between in the supply chain, but the numbers of such persons are limited and the prosperity accruing to the capitalists has not resulted in visible improvement in the social conditions of their workers or in any worthwhile contribution to tax revenues.
Instead there has been a decidedly negative effect on the internal food situation, with the land devoted to cotton cultivation increasing by almost fifty percent over the past two decades, to the detriment of grains and cereals supply.
The other problem inherent in depending on US and Canadian wheat is that these countries now export most genetically modified (GMO) crops. Both countries state that such exports are non-contaminating but there is ample evidence, including most recently with canola in Canada, that GMO crops have pollinated organically-growing standing crops in farms more than a hundred miles distant.
This is why a major farming community such as the European Union places severe restrictions and quarantines on the import of GMO crops, and refuses to grant permission for their cultivation.
The fact that Pakistan has evolved no policy in regard to GMO crops makes its situation even more risky. Eighty percent of the wheat that it cultivates is based on farmer-retained seeds and mutation of this crop by strains from non-seed producing GMO wheat can lead to serious production distortions.
Also, for some years now, GMO canola has been coming in from Canada, with no study conducted on its effects in the food chain, whether in the cooking oil extracted from it or in the residual "meal" used for animal feed which is passed into the soil where crops are cultivated.
Is it too far-fetched to be apprehensive on this account? If Iraq can be invaded for its oil, we should not discount the possibility that the food production of certain countries can be targeted, for political or commercial motives.
After all, in the case of Pakistan, the stakes are high on both counts. In the context of the known antagonism of the Anglo-Saxon powers toward our nuclear programme, and bearing in mind Pakistan's defensive capabilities, we should not lose sight of the fact that the food production base, if tampered with, can become a vulnerable economic flank.
And if, for example, the infected Australian wheat had not been detected and the fungus infiltrated to the standing crop, the resultant shortages in a wheat-consuming nation of 150 million people would make eminent commercial sense for a major wheat exporter such as Australia.
There is also the experience of Egypt, which historically had been an exporter of wheat to the entire Middle East region and parts of Europe.
However once Egypt's political differences with Turkey provided an opportunity for the European powers to gain entry through the guise of military co-operation, within ten years they had changed the bias of its land use from wheat to cotton, the export of which cash crop they controlled, and within another thirty years Egypt, for the first time in five thousand years, had became a net importer of wheat, a situation that has persisted for the past 150 years.
Consequently, Pakistan would do well to protect its indigenous grain production base by keeping out GMO crops until it is has the technological ability to control these.
Meanwhile, keeping open the doors open for wheat from Europe and elsewhere will be a sensible option, politically and economically.