EDITORIAL: Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir while addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Khanewal Model Agriculture Farm under the Green Initiative stated that “no power in the world can stop us from progressing, and an agriculture revolution will happen in Pakistan anyway.”
This statement was propitiously made on the second day of the three-day United Nations-brokered summit aimed at tackling the “broken” global food system where millions are starving, and the planet suffering wherein it was acknowledged that the food sector involves and is affected by multiple sectors including urbanisation, climate change, technology, government policy as well as the availability of imports to meet domestic supply shortfalls that have been severely compromised with the end of the Ukraine-Russia grain deal with little prospect at this time of a renewal.
Or, in other words, while technology/mechanisation is one of the key ingredients for increasing the yield per hectare, the extent of its use has to be carefully balanced with the employment currently being provided by the farm sector that may necessitate a gradual change over to enhancing mechanisation to enable the creation of jobs in the economy in other sectors.
Between 1991 and 2021, the share of agriculture in total employment in India dropped by 20 percentage points – yet in Pakistan there has been a decline of 8 percentage points in the comparable period. One reason could well be that India’s industrial sector’s diversity as well as output and employment changed over time, while in Pakistan, the industrial sector remains largely the same, with five major export- oriented sectors, and the country continues to export its surplus instead of producing to export - a long standing Business Recorder recommendation.
Climate change, with Pakistan as one of the most affected countries in the world, is yet another factor that is a major impediment to farm output.
Thus with or without the use of advanced technology, climate change can play a negative role in crop output as it did last summer and with rains this year forecast to be above normal levels there is a fear that output may be compromised yet again – output of essential crops like wheat which, in the event of a shortfall, would require imports that would command a higher price if the Russia-Ukraine grain deal is not revived, and cotton, a cash crop that is basic input to the textile sector, which is a major industrial sector employer, and which accounted for nearly 60 percent of all the country’s export earnings in 2022-23.
The government policy also plays a key role in farm output; however, by and large this role is directly proportional to the government’s capacity to extend subsidies, and here too the government is severely hamstrung given our almost non-existent fiscal space, which is an outcome of not only low revenue generation capacity but also a tendency to overspend on current expenditure by subsequent administrations, including the incumbent government.
Be that as it may, while one can fully endorse the Chief of Army Staff’s belief that security and the economy go hand in hand, as security without the economy or an economy without security is simply impossible, yet, what has to be acknowledged is that the economy and security must be seen within a macro-picture for greater effectivity, looking at each sector or subsector in isolation will not achieve the desired results.
Pakistan at the present junction needs a macroeconomic framework crafted by economists with the overarching objective of achieving development that spans all income groups and not limited to the elite who may or may not be able to ensure a trickle-down effect – a view that empirical studies reveal is not as automatic as argued by economists of yesteryears.
We fully support the COAS’s resolve to throw away the begging bowl, however, many in the past have had a similar intent but intent without holistic policy measures and their execution is unlikely to succeed.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023