The Risk Before the Harvest

Food security begins before the seed goes into the ground. So does policy.

This week, the Federal Committee on Agriculture could not finalise Rabi crop targets, waiting instead for an “illustrative price” for wheat. On seed, officials offered assurances that availability would be “satisfactory”, without disclosing quantities or a season-specific price. A day earlier, the Indus River System Authority approved an anticipated 22 percent water shortage for Punjab and Sindh.

The farmer cannot wait for these uncertainties to disappear. His land is approaching its sowing window.

The real wheat-policy question is whether the state can ask a farmer to commit land, credit and six months of effort to its most important food crop while leaving his expected return, water supply and the cost of essential inputs uncertain.

That commitment has become considerably more expensive. Year-on-year comparisons show DAP fertiliser and nitrophosphate about 25 percent dearer, and granular single superphosphate up more than 40 percent. Urea and calcium ammonium nitrate have risen by about 10 percent. High-speed diesel has climbed from Rs277 per litre last October to almost Rs395, an increase of nearly 43 percent.

Consider what those increases mean for a single acre. At unchanged application rates, a farmer using one to two bags of DAP, two bags of urea and an illustrative 20 litres of diesel faces approximately Rs6,500 to Rs10,000 in additional expenditure compared with last year’s prices. That excludes seed, weedicide, hired machinery, labour and additional groundwater pumping. The investment begins now. The return will not come for another six months.

The National Fertilizer Development Centre has previously linked declining fertiliser consumption to poor farm economics. When expected returns deteriorate, farmers rationally reduce their exposure. They may not abandon wheat altogether, but they can cut fertiliser application or compromise on seed quality. The acreage remains on the books, but the potential harvest has already been diminished.

This is the danger concealed by national acreage targets. A farmer can sow the same land while investing less in every acre. Government statistics may record the intended area under wheat, but they cannot capture the productive potential quietly surrendered through inadequate fertilisation, missed irrigation or inferior seed.

Food security begins with a private decision.

Somewhere in Punjab or Sindh, a farmer will look at a field and decide what to plant, how much to invest and how much risk he can afford. The state may describe wheat as strategic. Committees may announce national targets. Debates may rage over support prices. But none of these administrative acts plants a single acre. A farmer does.

He makes that decision through an arithmetic less sentimental than the national conversation. He knows what fertiliser, diesel, weed control and labour will cost. He also knows that his canal system is entering Rabi with a substantial anticipated shortage.

A 22 percent system shortage does not mean every field receives 22 percent less water. Water does not move as a national percentage. The farmer does not irrigate with IRSA’s arithmetic. He irrigates with the canal turn that reaches his outlet when his crop needs it. Where surface supplies fall short, pumping becomes more expensive or irrigation is forgone. Water shortage becomes cost before it becomes crop loss.

But water is only one part of the farmer’s calculation. The more immediate economic question is whether the crop he is being encouraged to grow will justify the money he must spend producing it.

Yet in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, prices, water, fertiliser and seed are debated as though they belong to separate policy worlds. Agricultural planners discuss production targets while water managers ration supplies and seed officials offer assurances. The farmer must reconcile all these decisions himself.

The government has retreated from guaranteed procurement without putting an equally credible framework for price expectations and market stability in its place. Provincial assistance schemes may offset some costs, but they cannot substitute for dependable markets. Risk has been transferred to the farmer without establishing the institutions needed to help him manage it.

Expecting a farmer to sow in November and discover the price in April is not price discovery. It is risk transfer.

An illustrative price can be useful, but only if the farmer understands what it illustrates. Is it based on production costs, import parity or expected market conditions? Does it represent a market forecast, a government procurement commitment or merely an aspiration?

These are not interchangeable. An announced number without a transparent methodology or credible market arrangements provides little assurance. The state need not promise to buy every grain. But it must explain its procurement intentions, the role of private trade and the conditions under which it may intervene.

The government cannot guarantee a profitable harvest, but it can establish predictable rules. Farmers need to know the basis on which the market is expected to operate before they commit their working capital, not after their crop is ready for sale.

Seed provides an instructive comparison. Last season, the Punjab Seed Corporation announced certified wheat seed at Rs5,500 per bag and committed to supplying 418,000 bags. This year, its published 2026–27 price schedule does not clearly identify a corresponding wheat rate or comparable supply commitment. The federal committee has merely been assured that availability will be satisfactory.

“Satisfactory” is a word. Farmers plant with numbers.

We learned the importance of timing at the last harvest. Farmers needing immediate cash faced weak prices, while those able to hold stocks could benefit when markets strengthened. The difference was not merely the price but the ability to wait. A farmer disappointed in April is unlikely to invest confidently in November simply because another official production target has been announced.

The problem has now moved from the farmer’s ability to hold his harvested wheat to his willingness to finance the next crop. Last season’s disappointment becomes this season’s investment decision. When millions of farmers make that calculation independently, the consequences become national.

A farmer who reduces fertiliser application or cant find good seed may still sow the same acreage, but harvest fewer tonnes. Across millions of acres, even a modest decline in yield can translate into a substantial wheat shortfall. The danger is not simply that farmers will plant less wheat. It is that Pakistan may harvest less wheat from the land it does plant.

That is where agricultural uncertainty becomes a food-security problem. Less domestic wheat means tighter supplies, greater pressure on flour prices and heavier burdens on households already struggling with the cost of living. What appears a rational saving on an individual farm can become an expensive national problem at harvest.

Pakistan is already arranging wheat imports. Imports may be necessary to cover genuine supply gaps, but they also reveal how quickly domestic production problems become foreign-exchange commitments. Pakistan risks spending scarce dollars buying wheat that better domestic policies might have helped its farmers produce.

The consequences ultimately reach people who have never seen a wheat field. They appear in the price of atta, in the household budget of a daily-wage worker and in the choices families make between food and other necessities. Food security is not merely a national production target or a figure in government wheat stocks. It is the ability of ordinary Pakistanis to obtain their most essential food at a price they can afford.

In agricultural policy, a decision postponed is a decision made. Its cost moves from the farmer to the consumer and ultimately to the balance of payments. By then, the decisions that helped create the problem were made months earlier, during the sowing window.

Much of this is within the government’s power to correct.

Announce the illustrative wheat price before sowing, publish its methodology and clarify the market and procurement arrangements behind it. Declare import policy early enough for farmers and traders to respond. Seed agencies should publish prices, certified quantities and district-wise supply commitments. Provinces should issue Rabi operating plans, including canal rotations and anticipated closures, and update them as conditions change.

These commitments must be accountable. A canal schedule is worthless if water never reaches the outlet. A seed announcement means little if farmers cannot obtain seed when needed. And a price announcement without credible market arrangements is little more than another assurance.

Above all, wheat prices, irrigation and agricultural inputs must be treated as parts of one food-security strategy. They cannot be planned in separate offices when they must come together in the same field.

This is the sowing window. The state cannot promise the farmer a better harvest, sufficient rainfall or a particular market price six months from now. But it can stop making him guess about decisions already within its control.

None needs to be a guarantee. All need to be intelligible.

Give the farmer a formula, not a guess. Give him distributary-level water information, not merely a provincial average. Tell him what his seed will cost and where it can be obtained. Then let him make his decision.

Pakistan cannot demand food security from its farmers while leaving them to bear the uncertainty of its agricultural policy.

Food security begins before the seed goes into the ground. So does policy.