Food inflation after floods

The prices of edibles soar up to unaffordable level in the domestic market, as the supply of agricultural produces is brought to a halt due to inundation of cultivable land by the recent floods. The brutal behaviour of market forces like traders, stockists, profiteers and wholesalers, whose insatiable lust for making money out of every crisis, natural or man-made, further worsen the situation.
Today, even in the countries that are called champions of capitalist economy, the ratio of state intervention in the domestic markets is increasing day by day in order to protect the citizens from the market forces whose heart melt on wealth, no matters how money comes, legally or otherwise. In order to develop a strong system of monitoring and control, statutory/financial bodies devise legal framework and financial package of intervention for vulnerable sector at the time when any crisis in demand and supply emerge in market. However, this pro-consumer or producer mechanism is missing in Pakistan, which is responsible for economic backslashes, creating hell for ordinary man. Unaffordable price hike of the edibles, at present, is the ultimate outcome of this missing phenomenon, on the one hand and disregard of the agricultural sector, on the other.
In Indus valley civilisation, agriculture was religion and tillage worship, as the farmers and peasants were nurtures of humanity. However, agronomy couldn't keep its sublime status intact after the rapid onslaught of industrialisation in free market economy. Like many agrarian civilisations, agrarian society of Indus valley faced continual disregard in the newly created state of Pakistan, though the motherland, peasants and farmers continued to perform their divine obligation to nurture their co-inhabitants in the urban centres. For that reason, the urban centres failed to appreciate the significance of these unknown nurturers, who constantly maintain the supply of vegetables, fruits, foodgrains, meat, milk and butter at their doorsteps. All goes well as long as the agriculture sector operates smoothly.
However, crisis surfaced when the nurturers of humanity themselves faced devastation. And now our common man, already under merciless impact of meagre resources, faces price hike because of historic flood. So, the flood havoc, first playing with the farms and farmers, is badly affecting the consumers of agrarian edibles. Now, we should realise the sublime status of agriculture in our life. Prior to the floods, the rates of pulses, vegetables, foodgrains, livestock products, oil and fruits were comparatively at affordable level, which now register 100% increase even in presence of low quality of the product, for Consumer Price Index rose to 15.71% owing to floods. Whenever the agriculture sector suffers, the majority population of urban centres also gets affected, adversely, because the former is the suppliers and the later is the consumer.
Pakistan's agriculture sector enjoys respectable status among the comity of nations, as it ranks 5th agricultural country in Muslim world and 20th largest world-wide in farm output, while it is the world's 5th largest producer of milk and 6th largest producer of wheat of best quality. Despite the fact that agriculture sector in Pakistan employs greater workforce and its contribution in the GDP is greater than that of China and India, the government protection available here in the form of roads, service centres and electricity for the agriculture centres remain abysmally low. A pivotal reason for this is the peculiar anti-farmer mindset of the public and private sector players. On account of lack of any sympathy with the growers, what our farmers gain after a great toil is easily lost in the name of trade for badly needed foreign exchange. So, inconvincible huge loss in terms of trade, elaborated in the graph below, must be an eye opener for those who control the pulses of national economy.
As shown in the above graph, traders buy from our farmers at cheaper rate for export at cheaper rate while they import at higher rate for supply at higher rate in the domestic market. Thus, loss in trade is distributed between the producers and consumers, which is inhumane even under the principles of free market economy. Secondly, Pakistan exports less and imports much in term of food and livestock, though its prestigious place in the world of growth is undeniable.
Another shocking factor the above graph shows is that the prices of consumable items and their import rise in hand with each other. Within eleven years time span, seven times increase occurs in import of food and livestock and almost the same is the ratio of increase of prices of the edibles. If the planners want to flood domestic market with foreign edible items, they would, one day or other, ruin the domestic consumers. Therefore, a dire need arises to maintain constant supply of edibles from the indigenous means. For, generous and workable support system for agriculture sector is urgently needed so that an ordinary man in urban centre could take sigh of relieve.
In this regard, the government for the first time has come forward to support devastated agricultural sector through concerted direct and indirect efforts. The government's call to world community for assistance in the cultivation of Rabi crop has brought fruition. The Argentinean government came first to provide sunflowers seeds for distribution in the flood affected farmers. Then come United Nations Food and Agriculture Programme for distribution of seeds of Rabi crop. Furthermore, the government itself has increased support prices of wheat, canola and sunflower. These remedial measures shall, indeed, enhance production and stop rising prices of several food items, though, this relief to the consumers shall be possible only after the harvest season of Rabi crop is over.