Wheat production target

The Federal Minister for Agriculture, Sikandar Hayat Bosan, announced at a press conference last Monday, that the Federal Committee on Agriculture had fixed wheat production target at 20.15 million tonnes for the year 2004-05 as compared to last year's actual production of 19.77 million tonnes.
Last year's target of 20 million tonnes could not be achieved due to shortfall in the availability of irrigation water.
The minister stated that the new target had been decided in the light of the projection with regard to water availability which, according to IRSA, would be 48 percent less than the actual availability in the last season. If judged in the context of further drop expected in the water level of dams for the forthcoming Rabi season, the target for wheat production would appear to be rather unrealistic and the actual production is more likely to be much lower than the last year's.
According to official estimates, wheat consumption in the country is in the region of 20 million tonnes and therefore a shortfall in production would entail the need for imports.
As experienced in the current season, the shortfall in production from the target of 20 million tonnes, has resulted in a serious shortage of wheat supply specially in Sindh and NWFP, ultimately forcing the government to import one million tonnes.
Water availability for the Rabi crop, as estimated by IRSA, will be in the region of 19.680 million acre-feet which will not be sufficient to meet the actual requirement for obtaining the desired level of wheat production. It is intriguing to note that in spite of the glaring predicament of 48 percent shortfall in water availability, the Food and Agriculture Committee has fixed a higher target for wheat production, advising the growers to bring more land under wheat cultivation.
Notwithstanding the unavoidable water shortage, the minister argued that harvesting of sugarcane having advanced due to pressures from the provincial governments on sugar mills to start crushing in October instead of November as usual, more land would be available for wheat sowing. It may be questioned here as to how a larger area under wheat cultivation can be successfully irrigated with 48 percent less water than the supply for a smaller area last year when the target was missed because of water shortage. Besides, the Federal Committee on Agriculture does not seem to have given due consideration to the need of increasing per acre yield which is one of the lowest in the world.
The average yield in Pakistan is estimated at hardly 25 to 30 maunds per acre while in other wheat growing countries, it is twice as much. Even in Pakistan, some model farms have obtained over 50 maunds of wheat per acre, which shows that greater efforts in this direction may result in achieving an improvement in per acre yield of wheat.
In the present circumstances, when water shortage has taken an acute turn, the advisable course should be to place more emphasis on increasing per acre yield than on bringing more land under wheat cultivation.
Another unfavourable fact for the wheat crop is the current shortage of urea production in the country. The minister stated that 1.7 million tonnes of urea fertiliser would be imported shortly to ensure full availability of the chemical for the forthcoming wheat crop.
According to him, urea imports may also be increased to 2.5 million tonnes, which would involve subsidisation of the imported fertiliser to the extent of Rs 2.5 billion, as its local sales price would be Rs 450 per bag while the cost of imported urea would come to about Rs 1150 per bag. It is indeed a disturbing aspect that the local production of fertiliser has not generated a rising trend in keeping with the rise in demand in spite of the fact that the natural gas is available in sufficient quantities as feed stock for urea production.
The agriculture sector in the country has been facing unexpected hurdles in the form of chronic shortage of irrigation water, and now the shortage of urea is posing a threat to its growth, the former ineluctable the latter courted by default.