EDITORIAL: That fact that the government makes one sector of the economy after another its “top priority,” sometimes more than one at the same time, shows that it is at least looking for ways to make most of them more efficient and productive. After targeting a number of sectors directly involved in exports it now seems to have finally turned its attention to the agriculture sector. During a meeting with the Punjab government in Lahore on Friday, the prime minister told everybody that “development and modernisation” of farming is now his government’s top priority.
It is high time that this priority is accorded as neglecting this most important sector of the economy can only at the nation’s peril since 60 percent of the population is associated with this sector. However, it is going to take a lot more than intentions and declarations to stem and reverse the decline in agriculture than telling the Punjab chief minister that he wants to see more value addition and improved standards of production in it. Some problems, like water scarcity and cropping patterns, will require long term solutions but there are other, more immediate, issues that the government can overcome more easily. In fact, it should already have overcome some of them by now.
First though it will have to ensure that farmers are represented at important meetings where policy options are discussed and decisions taken. This will ensure that issues like determining when and what support prices are announced, that tend to have a very direct bearing on the wellbeing of farmers and the final price of products in the market, will no longer become needless hurdles. For the strangest of reasons the government has got into the habit of delaying announcement of support prices, unnecessarily disrupting crop-sowing patterns because there’s only so long farmers can wait before deciding which crop to cultivate. In the case of wheat, when such delays force farmers to go for other options, they end up directly affecting the nation’s food supply and the final price of its staple food. Taking farmers along when decisions are made is a much better way to deal with this issue than tear-gassing them when they protest after the damage is done.
There’s also the matter of political interference. Sugarcane growers have been suffering because of it since forever, primarily because most sugar mills are owned by influential politicians who don’t find it too difficult to squeeze farmers as much as they possibly can. The right way to proceed, then, is to sort out these immediate-term issues while at the same time initiate longer term plans to deal with the more structural problems. And the biggest problem of them all is shortage of water. The prime minister made a lot of noise about the need to conserve water and build dams at the start of the administration, but the issue seems to have gone down the priority list since then.
These are very important issues since agriculture is not just responsible for most of our food and employing a big part of our labour force, it also provides the main inputs for our leading export products and hence plays a pivotal role in annual export earnings. Therefore, the country would not just have to buy a lot more food and care for a lot more unemployed people if the worst case scenario of Pakistan facing extreme water shortage in very few years comes true, it would also have no exports left to speak of.
Hopefully, now that the prime minister is seized with this matter this will not become one of his spur-of-the-moment decisions that fade away with time. The decline in agriculture is like a ticking time bomb and successive governments have not given it the kind of attention it deserves only to the whole nation’s cost. Already, we have come from being a self-sufficient in food and a water surplus country to having to import a lot of our food requirements and being dangerously water scarce. If the needed steps are not taken right now, a time may soon come when the situation gets completely out of control and nothing can salvage it. The government is running against the clock on this one. Hopefully, the PM’s instructions will be heeded and the government machinery related to the agriculture sector will mobilise immediately.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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