Pakistan\u2019s agriculture is routinely described as the backbone of the economy, yet today that backbone is visibly strained. Farmers labour in the fields, universities produce graduates and research, and governments announce policies, but these components rarely move in coordination. The outcome is predictable: volatile exports, wasted surpluses, avoidable imports, rising food inflation, and farmers trapped in recurring cycles of uncertainty. What Pakistan urgently needs is a new social contract for agriculture and food security a rules-based framework that aligns farmers, markets, institutions, and the state around shared responsibility and accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the core of this contract is mutual obligation. Farmers must improve quality, consistency, production planning, and market awareness through better crop selection, diversification, post-harvest discipline, compliance, traceability, and collective action. However, expecting farmers to modernise while ignoring their cost of production and exposing them to unchecked downstream market power is neither fair nor sustainable. Farmer obligations must be matched by predictable policies, functional markets, responsive research, and reliable infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, the farmer\u2019s cost of production seed, fertiliser, pesticides, diesel, electricity for tubewells, labour, land rent, finance, and climate risk is largely irrelevant in policy decisions. Support prices, where announced, are delayed, set below real costs, or rendered meaningless by weak procurement. In contrast, when elite sectors face pressure, the state intervenes swiftly. Exporters receive rescue packages, industrial users enjoy subsidised energy, fertiliser manufacturers earn record profits on concessional gas, and processors benefit from policy distortions that protect margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recent decisions highlight this imbalance. Rice exporters were extended financial support from the Export Development Fund to offset losses, while farmers facing harvest-time price collapses have no comparable safety net. Fertiliser companies reported extraordinary profits, enabled by subsidised gas, while farmers pay inflated prices for often adulterated inputs. Industrial electricity tariffs are reduced to maintain competitiveness, yet farmers face rising diesel costs and unreliable power. In sugar, export permissions during tight domestic supply created artificial shortages and massive windfall gains for mills, while cane growers continued to suffer delayed payments and suppressed prices. Textile exporters receive layered support energy concessions, tax relief, export finance, and fast-track refunds while cotton farmers absorb price volatility, pest damage, and import-led market suppression without protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This reveals the core distortion in Pakistan\u2019s agricultural economy: value is captured downstream, while risk is pushed upstream onto farmers. Governments repeatedly rescue organised lobbies but retreat behind market forces when farmers demand recovery of basic costs. Agriculture is treated as a shock absorber for industrial policy rather than a sector deserving protection in its own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A new social contract demands a decisive shift toward rules-based governance. Export and import decisions must no longer remain discretionary or politically reactive. Policy should be anchored in transparent data buffer stocks, surplus estimates, price bands, and real-time production intelligence. Export facilitation should be automatic once thresholds are met, while import rationalisation must prioritise necessity, local substitution, and foreign exchange conservation. Predictability stabilises farm decisions, strengthens exporter confidence, and protects consumers from artificial volatility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reform must also confront entrenched sectoral imbalances. In cotton, policies have favoured textile mill owners, ginners, and associations such as APTMA through liberal import permissions and weak domestic procurement. In sugarcane, politically connected sugar mills thrive on delayed crushing, manipulated recovery rates, and policy-induced rents. Wheat policy often tilts toward short-term interests through opaque procurement and release mechanisms. In rice, exporters under REAP benefit from farmers\u2019 vulnerability at harvest, while branding and value addition remain concentrated downstream. Fruits and vegetables follow the same extractive model, with farmers absorbing post-harvest losses and compliance risks while exporters capture premiums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally damaging is persistent leniency toward pesticide, fertiliser, and seed companies. Weak regulation and enforcement have allowed substandard and adulterated inputs to proliferate, raising farmers\u2019 costs, reducing yields, and undermining export credibility. A credible social contract requires that farmers are not forced to bear losses in case of surpluses and must be compensated at least their cost of production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rebalancing this system is the state\u2019s central responsibility. Timely payment enforcement, transparent pricing formulas linked to verified cost-of-production data, effective competition oversight, and action against cartelisation must become non-negotiable. Any subsidy, fiscal incentive, or export facilitation extended to mills or exporters should be conditional on measurable farmer-level outcomes. Large processors must invest in extension, quality improvement, traceability, and post-harvest infrastructure at the farm gate not as charity, but as a condition of privileged market access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Agricultural universities and research institutions are another pillar of this contract, wherein nepotism must be halted. Their role must move beyond classrooms and publications. Curricula, research agendas, and extension services should directly support market-aligned production, export competitiveness, and import substitution. Public funding and institutional rankings must reward real-world impact rather than bureaucratic metrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The private sector remains indispensable, but partnership implies responsibility. Exporters and processors must engage farmers well before harvest on crop planning, quality standards, and compliance. Public – private partnerships can develop cold chains, accredited laboratories, grading facilities, and digital traceability systems. When markets collaborate rather than extract, farmers earn fair returns and exports grow sustainably.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Food security and exports are not competing goals. Strategic reserves, adequate storage, and quality differentiation allow Pakistan to feed its population while supplying international markets. When surplus management becomes systematic, exports shift from opportunistic responses to planned outcomes, and unnecessary imports are disciplined through smart regulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pakistan\u2019s agricultural crisis is not a failure of farmers; it is a failure of governance. The country has land, farmers, and knowledge. What it has lacked is coordination and the political will to confront entrenched interests across the value chain. A new social contract for agriculture can correct this imbalance but only if the state stops subsidising elites and finally recognises a basic truth: no agricultural system can survive when the producer\u2019s cost of production is treated as irrelevant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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