‘Frivolous govt attitude may lead to food crisis’

Lack of effective policy causes reduction in per capita food availability.

LAHORE: The incompetency of the federal and Punjab governments to chalk out some solid policies to ensure improvements in agriculture sector could lead to a serious food crisis as early as by the end of this year, warned Ibrahim Mughal, chairman of Agri Forum Pakistan.

Mughal, while talking to a group of journalists on Monday on the eve of ‘World Food Day’ being observed around the globe on October 16, said that the global food situation was not very promising as three years back global production of wheat was 690 million tons which has come down to 650 million tons, depicting a decrease of 40 million tons. He regretted that situation in Pakistan’s case was not very different despite being an agrarian country but the lack of any effective policy had lead to reduction of food available per capita per annum in the country.

He said that to attain bumper harvest, the sector needs vision, planning and implementation. Unfortunately, he alleged that it was absent in case of Pakistan, especially Punjab. He said that Pakistan imported the highest number of food items during the year 2011-12 worth Rs476,  billion in its history. He said these imported items included dry milk, vegetables, fruits, edible oil etc.

He said in 2004-06 Pakistan’s population was around 154 million and availability of food per person per annum was 194 kilogrammes (kg) which rose to 206 kg in year 2008 when population touched 170 million people. However, he said it again dropped during 2012 when 177 million people had only 191 kg of food per person per annum available. Logically, it should be over 200 kg per person per annum, Mughal said.

He said that lentils were available to Pakistanis at 3.7 kg per person per annum in the present period, down from 7 kg per person per annum in 2005. He said that total production of food crops which included wheat, rice, maize, barley etc had also reduced by 3 million tons during the last four years and all these signs were predicting that Pakistan might be heading to a famine in year 2014.

Mughal was hypercritical to the Punjab government in this scenario saying that it was the province which could have played a leading role in enhancing the production of food crops. However, he regretted that those sitting at the helm of affairs in the agricultural sector lacked vision or the capacity to make a long-term policy for development and progress of this sector.

“We only had ad-hoc policies since last many years,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2012.