Climate change and failed policies are pushing Pakistan towards food insecurity

Farmers in Pakistan have been protesting for the past few months after the government cut wheat procurement quotas. The early-harvest province of Sindh has been at the center of the protests, but two months after the end of this year’s wheat harvest in the province, the stalemate continues.

“The government has fixed the wheat procurement rate and was supposed to issue wheat bags directly to farmers, but some food department officials are allegedly selling the bags to small traders (pedhi) in exchange for bribes. As a result, pedhi-walas buy wheat from farmers at lower rates than the government-mandated rate of PKR 100,000 ($360) per 100 kilograms,” Akram Khaskheli, president of the Sindh-based Hari Welfare Association, told Dialogue Earth. Wheat bags are issued for packing and selling wheat to government procurement centers.

Khaskheli further stated that if the government continues to mismanage the situation, it will lead to loss of valuable crops, further worsening food insecurity despite the availability of wheat.

Large government purchases of wheat – typically about 20% of production, or 5.6 million tonnes – at the minimum support price provide a buyer for some of the produce and help establish the market rate. However, the current issue is also about climate change and how it is pushing Pakistan’s agricultural sector into crisis.

Two years of crisis in agriculture after the floods in 2022

The current crisis is linked to the massive floods that hit Pakistan in July-September 2022, inundating one-third of the country’s districts. A number of climate factors – including a warming ocean – have converged to produce extreme rainfall events that have moderately or severely affected 15% of Pakistan’s farmland.

Recommended

In areas such as Johi in Dadu district of Sindh province, the impact lasted for many seasons. A huge amount of water from the floods stopped for six months after the initial disaster. A dam also collapsed and could not be opened for two years.

Forty-four-year-old Talib Gadehi and his brothers, who together own 350 acres (141 hectares) of farmland in the area, told Dialogue Earth that most of them had struggled to farm their land for four consecutive seasons in two years.

Gadehi said the dam collapse affected about 100,000 acres (40,469 hectares) and made farmland barren. “This situation has caused mass migration (out of the area),” he added.

Rising inflation stimulated imports

Across Pakistan, such effects have contributed to the country’s decline from 99th place^vol place on the Global Hunger Index in 2022 at 102^II in 2023. According to a January 2024 analysis by the Food and Agriculture Organization, poverty rates increased from 34% in 2022 to 39% in 2023, mainly due to higher food prices. This further weakened the purchasing power of the weakest households. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, more than 10 million people “experienced high levels of acute food insecurity… between April and October 2023.”

Wheat makes up 72% of the country’s staple food and to deal with issues of food security and inflation, the interim government appointed before the 2024 national elections decided to import wheat at the end of 2023. Except that by then the agricultural sector had returned to norms, and farmers expected higher yields than normal. However, since the government was already importing wheat, it now wants to buy less from farmers, prompting protests.

January 2023 protest in Lahore, Pakistan against the increase in wheat flour prices. High food prices were largely responsible for pushing 12.5 million more Pakistanis below the poverty line in 2023. (Photo: KM Chaudary/Alamy)

Muhammad Arif Goheer, head of the agriculture, forestry and land use section at the Global Climate Change Impacts Research Center (GCISC) in Islamabad, explained the decision to import wheat to Dialogue Earth in March, before the protests, as an affordability issue. Although grain may be available in a country, if the price is too high, it remains inaccessible to the poor. Grain imports have indeed caused the price of wheat to plummet “to between Rs 3,000 and Rs 3,100 per 40 kg, which is well below the minimum support price (MSP) fixed for wheat for the 2024-25 season of Rs 3,900 per 40 kg,” he claimed. until dawn, but this led to protests by farmers who were hoping for a decent season after two years of difficulties.

Goheer said: “The ultimate solution to the problem of inflation and food security lies in the adoption of precision agriculture and the use of high-yield seeds.”

However, Khaskheli of the Hari Welfare Association noted that farmers receive little or no help in this regard. “From beginning to end, growers are helpless,” he said. “Growers face obstacles in accessing high-quality seeds, fertilizers and pesticides and are forced to sell their crops at lower rates. This impacts crop yields and food security.”

Food security threatened by poor governance and climate change

Both the protests and Pakistan’s dismal rankings on the global hunger index underscore how important agricultural policy is to Pakistan’s food security and social stability. In terms of core indicators, the country is performing well. In 1947-48, wheat was sown on 3,953 hectares, yielding 3,354 tons with a yield of 0.848 tons per hectare. By 2022-23, Pakistan has sown wheat on 9,043 hectares, yielding 27,634 tonnes with an average yield of 3,056 tonnes per hectare.

Although Pakistan is currently 7th^vol the largest wheat producer in the world is only 38th^vol in terms of average wheat yield according to Index Mundi, with an average yield of 3 metric tons per hectare. New Zealand currently has the highest average wheat yield in the world at 10 metric tons per hectare.

According to Bashir Ahmad, director of the Climate, Energy and Water Resources Institute (CEWRI) under the Federal Ministry of National Food Security and Research, climate change is a growing challenge in increasing productivity. He explains that Pakistan’s agricultural sector relies heavily on irrigation, 60-70% of which comes from melting snow and glaciers. However, global warming and climate change have impacted this contribution both quantitatively and temporally.

In September 2022, a farmer picks rotting apples in a flood-damaged orchard near Quetta, Pakistan. From heatwaves and floods to changing rainfall and unpredictable melting of glaciers, climate change is making life difficult for farmers in the South Asian country (Photo: Arshad Butt / Alamy)

Additionally, changing rainfall patterns affect water availability and storage, with intense and short-duration rainfall leading to soil erosion, Ahmad told Dialogue Earth. This has a serious impact on rain-fed agriculture in the Potohar region and northern parts of the country.

“Research shows that changing rainfall patterns impact various crops by 6-15%, particularly rain-fed crops such as wheat, where reductions of up to 15% have been observed. This reduction does not take into account the impact of heatwaves and floods,” Ahmad added.

Ahmad said that in cold regions like Gilgit Baltistan, fruits like oranges ripen early due to inadequate cooling hours. Moreover, limited water supply for irrigation has led to increased dependence on groundwater in Punjab, causing groundwater levels to decline.

Solutions available, but government support critical

Agricultural scientist Zafar Ali Khokhar, director of agronomy at the Sakrand Wheat Research Institute in Sindh, suggests that local seed varieties could double the current production potential. However, producing high-quality seeds still faces supply and demand issues.

“Our institute has developed varieties that yield 80 maunds of wheat per acre (7.43 tons per hectare), as evidenced by consistent use. It is the responsibility of responsible producers to ensure the necessary supply of seeds. Currently, only 30% of the total seed demand is made up of high-yield wheat seeds, supplied by the government or private companies,” Khokhar told Dialogue Earth.

Aamer Hayat Bhandara, who was a member of the Prime Minister’s committee on improving agricultural yields in 2023, emphasized that it was time to act. “If previous governments could not prioritize giving due attention to providing farmers with modern techniques, technology and accessibility, despite their huge importance in the agricultural sector, it is high time to focus on it now.”