Pakistan to miss wheat sowing target

The country might miss the wheat sowing target this year, as farmers are reluctant to cultivate wheat owing to the highest ever input cost and low wheat support price. Agri Forum Pakistan has asked the government to immediately increase the support price to Rs1,250 per maund and ensure urea availability at control price.
Agri Forum Pakistan Chairman, Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal pointed out that the government had fixed the wheat sowing target of 22 million acre, but only 14 per cent of the targeted area (three million acre) could bring under wheat crop. Farmers were least interested in sowing wheat, as production cost had reached to Rs1,025 per maund against the support price of Rs950 per maund. On average, farmers had to bear the loss of Rs2,100 per acre due to low support price, he maintained.In an open letter to the Prime Minister, Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani, he stated that there was a dire need to ensure easy availability fertilisers. He asked the government to import 1.5 million tonnes of urea and bind fertiliser manufacturers to mention retail price on fertiliser bags in order to avoid exploitation and profiteering. Mughal said that farmers were getting urea fertiliser at Rs1,800 per bag, as profiteers were charging unjustified profit of Rs500 per bag. The subsidy offered to farmers was directly going in to the pockets of federal minister and officials of the National Fertilisers.
He further added that if the government could not take any of these steps, it should immediately fix the imported urea price equivalent to locally produced commodity. He estimated that the county might face a wheat production shortfall of 2-3 million tonnes, due to the least interest of farmers. He further stated that the government had fixed the wheat support price of Rs950 per maund some three years ago, but the input costs had been increased by 165 to 225 per cent in the prices of fertilisers, seeds, electricity and pesticides.