Tehseen Athar sold gandum (wheat) grown on 8 acres of his 12-acre holding at Pakistani rupees (PKR) 5,500 per quintal last April. This January, the cereal was wholesaling in Chowk Azam mandi, not far from his village of Chak 152 in Layyah district in Pakistan’s Punjab province, at PKR 14,000 per quintal.
“I never imagined that gandum prices would go up 2.5 times within nine months and consumers would pay PKR 180 per kg for atta (wheat flour). Even today (when the new crop is due for harvesting in March-April), wheat is selling at PKR 10,000 per quintal and atta at PKR 150-160 per kg,” Athar tells The Indian Express over the telephone.
The 32-year-old terms the current wheat inflation in Pakistan as “aap da banaya masla (a self-created problem)”.
Aamer Hayat Bhandara, a farmer from Chak 26 SP village in Pakpattan district of Pakistan’s Punjab province who cultivates 125 acres, agrees with Athar, “Neither the consumers nor the producers have benefited from this inflation. Our input costs have gone up even more than the price of wheat. Unlike farmers in your (Indian) Punjab, there is no free power here. We also do not receive subsidised fertilisers.”
Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar, chairperson of Pakistan Kissan Ittehad.
Both Athar and Bhandara harvest 50-55 man (20-22 quintals; one man equals 40 kg) of wheat on each acre, which is more or less the average wheat yield of farmers in India’s Punjab. The difference, however, lies in costs.
Athar estimates the cost of fertilisers alone in growing one acre of wheat at PKR 26,000—PKR 18,000 for 1.5 bags (75 kg) of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), PKR 2,500 for 1 bag (50 kg) each of urea and calcium ammonium nitrate, and PKR 3,000 for 2.5 litres of potash. Harvesting and threshing expenses per acre come to PKR 6,000 and PKR 8,000 respectively. Then, farmers pay PKR 8,000 for wheat seeds, PKR 5,000 for field preparation and ploughing, and PKR 3,000 for spraying to keep weeds and rust fungal diseases at bay, which takes the total to about PKR 56,000 per acre.
“Irrigation costs are over and above these expenses. They range anywhere from PKR 5,000 to PKR 7,500 per acre depending on the number of irrigation rounds and whether these were done using solar or non-subsidised electricity and diesel. Diesel costs about PKR 270 per litre in Pakistan now and a unit of electricity PKR 35. Irrigating one acre takes around 5 hours and requires 2 litres of diesel per hour. A single round of irrigation using a diesel pump will thus cost PKR 2,700. We usually do three rounds of irrigation for wheat during the season from sowing to harvesting,” adds Athar.
All in all, the cost of producing wheat on one acre works out to over PKR 60,000. At last year’s procurement price of PKR 5,500 per quintal and a yield of 20 quintals per acre, Pakistani farmers would have roughly netted PKR 50,000 per acre.
“But all these costs are what we incur on basic inputs. It excludes interest on crop and farm machinery loans, land lease and return on our own labour,” points out Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar, the chairperson of Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, a Multan-based farmer organisation.
The government of Pakistan’s Punjab has announced a procurement price of PKR 8,000 per quintal for the current year’s crop. The government in Sindh province has fixed a higher rate of PKR 10,000 per quintal, which is closer to the ruling open market price.
“The crop in Sindh arrives by the third week of March, whereas our wheat comes a month after that. Sindh farmers benefit from this because the government wants to stock up early and is willing to pay more to do that,” notes Athar, who holds an MBA degree in finance.
In comparison, the Narendra Modi government in India has fixed the minimum support price (MSP) for this year’s wheat crop at INR 2,125 per quintal. While the MSP may seem lower compared to PKR 8,000-10,000 per quintal being paid to Pakistan’s farmers, the total input cost for wheat in India is estimated at INR 12,000-15,000 per acre. The maximum retail price (MRP) of urea is just INR 281.4 per 50-kg bag, INR 1,350 per bag for DAP, INR 1,450 per bag for complex fertilisers, INR 1,700 per bag for muriate of potash and INR 90-95 per litre for diesel. And electricity is free for farmers in Punjab in India.
Anwar, who grows wheat on 100 of his 600 acres in Chak 21 MR village of Punjab’s Multan district, blames the urrent wheat crisis in Pakistan largely on government mismanagement.