Deregulation leaves farmers at middlemen's mercy: SAB

Abadgar Board says stagnant crop prices, soaring input costs have cost farmers billions

HYDERABAD:

The Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) has blamed the provincial government's deregulation policy in the agriculture sector for allowing middlemen to exploit growers while keeping crop prices depressed.

At a meeting chaired by SAB President Mahmood Nawaz Shah in Hyderabad on Sunday, the board said the policy was incentivising "cash-rich and exploitative middlemen to buy cheap and sell expensive".

The agriculturists described the policy shift as a knee-jerk measure and claimed that farmers had suffered losses amounting to tens of billions of rupees over the past two years due to what they called unchecked exploitation by middlemen.

They said food price inflation had reached 29% during the period, while prices of crops sold by farmers had either declined or remained unchanged.

The board warned that rising prices of agricultural inputs coupled with falling or stagnant crop prices were discouraging farmers from investing in the sector.

"No business can withstand persistent losses over consecutive years and harvest seasons," the board observed.

The SAB also claimed that government subsidies on certain agricultural inputs were reaching only around 15% of small growers, leaving the overwhelming majority exposed to higher input costs and low crop prices.

"The existing government policy of not letting crop prices increase isn't tenable," the board said.

The farmers argued that deregulation without competitive markets, coupled with restrictions on crop exports, would ultimately hurt both growers and consumers.

They said farmers would be forced to sell their produce at low prices while consumers would continue to purchase food at exorbitant rates.

The board urged the Sindh government and the Competition Commission of Pakistan to take measures to prevent manipulation of food prices and exploitation of growers.

It said weaknesses in the regulatory framework could prevent the deregulation policy from becoming fully functional and called on the government to resume fixing crop prices.