Wheat shortage likely despite bumper crop

Bumper crop or not, brace yourselves for another year of wheat shortage as all that extra produce will either be sold out of the country or left spoiling in the open at the whims of farm rats as all warehouses are almost full. It has been decades since the green revolution but the promise to ensure secure storage for food grain remains unfulfilled in Pakistan - a country where 38 per cent of children below two years are malnourished and sleep hungry.
Pakistan needs 22 million tons of wheat for its domestic consumption, while almost 1 million tons is required as seed to be used for the next crop. Further, 0.5 to 1 million tons is required for preparing poultry and cattle feed. All these requirements add up to approximately 23.5 million tons, leaving a little surplus which could have been utilised domestically by lower prices instead of exporting it, had it not been for the storage constraints.
Total storage capacity in the country stands at around 5.5 million tons in the public sector and 1.4 million tons in the private sector, which is clearly insufficient to meet the needs of the entire agricultural sector.
The trouble is that this is not just a short term problem. If farmers build storage facilities, they would suffer with shortage of funds needed for the next crop due in four months, if they don increase the capacity, the storage crises would continue. Either way, next wheat crop is likely to remain into snags, unless of course, the government takes a quick step.
Up until now, the governments approach has been ad hoc resulting in destabilisation of price and worked contrary to food security goals. Though public investment in agriculture has gone up in the last few years, not much has been targeted specifically at creating better storage, handling and distribution infrastructure.
Instead of exporting food grain, the government should be focusing on effective administration of commodities to use food surpluses to eradicate hunger. Here, the failure over the past many decades, to ensure adequate storage space, an integral part of the agricultural policy, remains a big question mark.