Availability of wheat seed

Mere 6% of the total requirement for next season is available in the public sector and the rest is in private sector

We are an agricultural country with shortages of agricultural commodities. For more than a year, we have been experiencing the shortage of wheat, wheat flour and sugar driving the rates of these essential commodities to unprecedented levels. The shortage of wheat flour is being met through import and the government claims that now the prices of these commodities are registering a downward trend.

However, the country would likely face a severe shortage of wheat seed for the upcoming sowing season. This is going to be the latest addition to a string of shortages. According to a report prepared by the ministry of food security, now only 513,000 tons of standard wheat seed are available in the country against the need for around one million tons to meet the target of wheat production set for the next year. This leaves a gap of 43% between demand and supply. All provinces face an identical situation as regards the shortage of wheat seeds. A mere 6% of the total requirement for the next season is available in the public sector and the rest is in the private sector.

Officials say the supply of quality wheat seed has increased by only 23,000 tons over the past year. In 2019 too, the availability of quality wheat seed was inadequate, indicating that it is a chronic issue. They attribute the shortage of quality wheat seed to the absence of a proper mechanism for seed regulation, saying this shortcoming has rendered it difficult to decide about availability and requirement of seed in advance. They revealed that the number of seed inspectors was highly inadequate, and this had compounded the problem.

Experts have been complaining that we lack quality seeds to improve the yields of commodities like wheat, cotton, sugar cane and rice. They have been asking the government to import quality seeds before our research institutes evolve better quality seeds. The failure of research institutes to evolve high-yielding seeds can be ascribed to a lack of proper planning and mismanagement.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th, 2020.

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