Pakistan importing wheat despite a bumper crop - local wheat just vanished.

[maqsad]

Something really fishy is going on here. Where is all the wheat vanishing to? India, Iran or maybe even Afghanistan? How can they lose track of such huge amounts of wheat, I mean can't they trace it's sale and distribution?

Go-ahead for immediate import of 250,000 tons of wheat



By Ihtasham ul Haque​

ISLAMABAD, May 6: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet has approved a proposal to import 1.5 million tons of wheat but kept in place a ban on its inter-provincial movement to discourage smuggling and hoarding.

Presiding over the committee’s meeting here on Tuesday, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ordered that 250,000 tons of wheat should be imported immediately because the price in the world market was showing a downward trend.

Sources said there were conflicting views on the issue of inter-provincial transportation of wheat.

“Federal Food Committee chief Farooq Ahmad Khan opposed the lifting of the ban saying it would encourage smuggling and hoarding,” they said.

The prime minister said the ban should continue for some time so that there was no crisis like the one experienced earlier, the sources said.

The ECC approved the export of 50,000 tons of wheat to Afghanistan to avert a food crisis in the neighbouring country.

The prime minister ordered that the export should be undertaken only at the government level. He said Pakistan would continue to provide wheat and flour to Afghanistan.

The committee was informed that the wheat procurement target for 2008-9 was five million tons, of which 2.121 million tons (42 per cent) had been procured, compared to 2.054 million tons during the corresponding period last year.

Regarding the ban on wheat supply to the feed industry, the prime minister called for finding out other options because it was the country’s second largest industry.

The committee decided to strengthen measures to curb wheat smuggling.

It directed the ministry of food and agriculture to ensure food security and take all necessary measures to overcome shortage all over the country.

It was informed that the Sensitive Price Indicator showed an increase in prices of 23 items and decline in six with 24 remaining unchanged.

It was told that the percentage increases in the prices in the past week were much lower than those over the previous 10 weeks.

The prime minister ordered the setting up of a committee to ensure availability of flour at affordable price through utility stores. The committee will take measures to launch a scheme to enable the poor to get essential food items at subsidised rates. It would consist of representatives of the ministries of finance, industries and social welfare and the National Database and Registration Authority to prepare a database of the needy households.

The sources said the meeting unanimously opposed offering subsidised food items to all segments of the society.

“It will be unfair to offer food subsidy to everyone. Only the needy people should get this facility,” they quoted Prime Minister Gilani as saying.

The sources said the meeting could not decide whether the poorer section of the society should be given cash or ration cards or food stamps.

Observing that the rice production in the country was more than the requirement, the ECC decided that it should be exported only after meeting the domestic needs and ensuring price stability.The meeting was informed that the domestic consumption of rice was a little over two million tons and the production this year had gone up to 5.5 million tons.

The ECC authorised the ministry of food and agriculture to negotiate with the American multi-national company Monsento to introduce the technology for genetically modified cotton seed in the country as the national output had dropped from 14 million bales to 11 million bales during the current year.

Federal Bureau of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Abdullah Yousuf informed the ECC that the organisation had collected Rs761 billion by April 30. He expressed the confidence that the revised target of Rs990 billion revenue collection would be achieved during the remaining two months of the financial year.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Afghanistan and hoarders - corruption and huge bribes for border officials.

 

[BATMAN]

"If, in India, 300 or 400 million people are suddenly eating twice a day when they used to eat just once, that naturally has a major influence," she said. That, she added, points to a need for long-term planning of farmland.

Could be possible that all wheat is flown to India via Afghanistan.
Americans may know the best as both are together in Afghanistan.

 

[BATMAN]

Bush's remark on Indian food habits:

Thiruvananthapuram, May 4 (PTI) Defence Minister A K Antony today termed as a "cruel joke" US President George W Bush's contention that growing demand for foodgrains in India was the reason for spiralling global food prices.
Largescale conversion of agriculture land for commercial and bio-fuel cultivation purposes have resulted in food shortage at the global level, Antony told reporters here.

"Policies of USA were also responsible for foodgrain shortage," he said. Those who criticise should not set apart agriculture land for other purposes. The countries, including America, should rectify their mistakes, he said.

It was true that production of rice and wheat have come down in the country resulting in shortage of these items, Antony said on the sidelines of a convention. PTI

Didn't I said Indians are the biggest benficiary of 9/11

 

[PakistaniPatriot]

Bush's remark on Indian food habits:

Thiruvananthapuram, May 4 (PTI) Defence Minister A K Antony today termed as a "cruel joke" US President George W Bush's contention that growing demand for foodgrains in India was the reason for spiralling global food prices.

Yup. India is where all the atta is going. I don't know how anyone can export Pakistani atta. After Gilani to the "seat" he replaced the logistics head. I think this is why all this has happened.Sad to say but Pakistan is in a pretty bad situation.

 

[maqsad]

Well well well, looks like some interesting developments are going on right by the pakistani border. The so called Indian breadbasket is having a serious distribution people with people dying and also just killing themselves in frustration. It is obvious that the system in India is set up to starve a significant portion of their population in case of a food crisis, they don't even guarantee their population adequate nourishment so it is possible that a mafia might be operating in the black market smuggling food in to fill the demand the Indian govt ignores. Who knows really, but this is a very interesting article nevertheless...farmers who produce food are even starving.

India’s breadbasket unable to feed its farmers
​

By Parul Gupta​

HAMIRGARH (India): Unlike his father and brother who hanged themselves, Labh Singh gulped down pesticide to end his misery, leaving his wife to look after five children and pay off the family debts.

His widow Saroj was at her parents’ home and by the time she heard the news last November, Singh had already been cremated.

“There was never enough to eat in the house, so the debt kept piling up,” Saroj said at her home in Hamirgarh village in the Punjab, a region long known as India’s breadbasket.

Singh joined the thousands of farmers and labourers who have killed themselves in the affluent state in the past decade because of a crisis blamed on official neglect of the farming sector.

Experts say the government must pay immediate attention to agriculture if it is to save the situation, even as the price of the food grown by the farmers surges rapidly.

While suicides in India’s other states have been extensively recorded and acknowledged by the federal government, alarming numbers in Punjab have drawn far less attention.

“The government refuses to admit there’s a crisis here as Punjab has always been the showpiece agricultural success story,” said Inderjit Singh Jaijee, a former legislator who works on farmer suicides.

As the majority of suicides are recorded with police as natural deaths because of fear of harassment, there is little official data on the Punjab cases.

Jaijee’s non-profit Movement Against State Repression estimates that more than 60,000 debt-ridden Punjab farmers have killed themselves in the past two decades.

More conservative estimates put the number at 20,000 since the mid-1990s.

“Today, the farmers are killing themselves. Tommorrow, they will kill others if something is not done,” Jaijee warned.

Punjab farmers labour under a collective debt of Rs100 billion ($2.5 billion) — three times the average for farmers in the rest of India, according to the non-profit Agricultural Heritage Mission.

Rising pesticide and fertiliser costs, shrinking land holdings, declining soil fertility and heavily-subsidised farming in rich countries are some of the factors blamed for the tragedy.

In the past five years, 400,000 Punjab farmers have become labourers after selling their land to pay debts, said farmer Ram Daya Singh, who collects information on the suicides.

Village money-lenders, who charge up to 25 per cent interest in the absence of institutional finance, shrug off any blame.

“If a farmer earns Rs10 and spends Rs20 on his daughter’s wedding, what option do you think he will have but to kill himself,” said money-lender Sarmukh Singh at the local grain market, where tonnes of wheat arrived as harvest ended.

COST OF ‘GREEN REVOLUTION’: Ironically, Punjab was one of the states that spearheaded India’s “Green Revolution” in the 1960s which led to a four-fold increase in staple food production.

It was hailed as one of the world’s most successful agricultural stories as high-yield varieties of wheat and rice were introduced, chemical fertilisers and pesticides promoted and irrigation intensified.

Though it brought food security and decades of prosperity to Punjab, many of those decisions are today blamed for the dismal state of agriculture.

Farmers were urged to grow paddy which is not natural to the northern region and requires intensive irrigation, said activist Jaijee.

“The state has more than one million tubewells. At this rate, Punjab will become a desert in a few years,” he said.

Indeed, Punjab’s water table has fallen rapidly, leading to rising costs amid the need to dig ever deeper wells and increased contamination of ground water caused by rampant use of pesticides.

“We don’t need agriculture with greed. We don’t need technology which is not ecologically, economically and socially justifiable to our surroundings,” said activist Umendra Dutt, who promotes natural farming at the Heritage Mission.

“The Green Revolution was based on hybrid seeds, chemicals, machines and water-guzzling crop systems,” said Dutt.

Punjab, which has 1.5 per cent of the country’s total area and 2.5 per cent of the agricultural land, consumes 18 per cent of total pesticides used in India.

It also uses the highest percentage of chemical fertilisers and has the highest rate of ground water exploitation.

All this leads to far higher costs amid declining productivity, in turn leading to increasing losses and heavy borrowing by farmers.

Paradoxically, to preserve Punjab as India’s wheat basket, the government did not promote industry, resulting in little alternative employment.

“In the 1950s, the government kept Punjab as the granary of India, and deprived it of industry,” Jaijee said.

HEADING TOWARDS FAMINE: This year, the federal government has predicted a record wheat harvest of 76.78 million tonnes — up five per cent — and ruled out wheat imports after buying from abroad for two years.

The government has also raised to Rs1,000 ($25) a quintal (100 kg), from Rs750 last season, the minimum price at which it buys wheat from farmers for distribution to the poor.

But some experts said that if the government is to avert a famine, it must change many policies which they say benefit seed, fertiliser and grain trading corporations at the cost of farmers.

“The rate of growth of food output in the 1980s was 3.8 per cent per year.

It has come down to 0.5 percent per year in the past six years,” said S.P

Shukla, a former member of India’s Planning Commission.

The farm sector — which supports nearly two-thirds of India’s 1.1 billion people — grew at 3.2 per cent in the quarter ended March 2008, while the economy expanded by 8.4 per cent.

“The large-scale diversion of fertile land to special economic zones (for industry) has to stop or we will have a massive famine in two years,” said food expert Vandana Shiva, founder of the non-profit Navdanya (nine seeds) based in New Delhi.She said many pro-market policies — boosting export-oriented cash crops, promoting bio-fuel production and importing grain at high prices — were pushing farmers to the brink.

With an eye on next year’s general elections, the government in March announced a massive $15-billion bailout for 40 million poor farmers.

But farmers say it will help only those who borrowed from banks, rather than moneylenders.

“That loan waiver is a big lie. This economy is booming only for city people,” said Ram Diya Singh.

“This debt has destroyed us,” said Baljit Kaur, whose widowed sister abandoned her three young children to marry another man after her farmer husband killed himself.—AFP

 

[Neo]

Stop smuggling atta to Afghanistan!

 

[Vinod2070]

Didn't I said Indians are the biggest benficiary of 9/11

And it has been proven by this statement?

Do you take every word of Bush and the Germans as the absolute truth? Even what they say about Muslims? Do you believe what he says about Iraq/Iran/Pakistan?

Then why this prowling on this statement? And what does it even mean?

I sometimes wonder where this kind of idiotic hate is coming from. Pathetic and hateful like always.

I wish that the people wishing others hunger would be made to experience it just for a month. Severe and forced.

The biggest beneficiary of 9/11 has been Musharraf and to an extent Pakistan! Musharraf was a pariah before that date who must not even be photographed with a US president and after that phone call he became a statesman overnight! Pakistan overnight became the frontline state and started getting billions of dollars and loan wavers and deferments. Think before you write such gibberish.

 

[ejaz007]

The problem begain when the last government allowed export of wheat. Later it was discovered that the figures indicating stock of wheat in country were wrong. Therefore shortage happened. Also due to high price in neighbouring countries export exceeded the limit allowed. Smuggling also had an impact. The result is Pakistan is forced to import wheat on higher prices than what we had sold the wheat in international market.
It shall take some time before situation improves.

 

[Vinod2070]

"If, in India, 300 or 400 million people are suddenly eating twice a day when they used to eat just once, that naturally has a major influence," she said. That, she added, points to a need for long-term planning of farmland.

Could be possible that all wheat is flown to India via Afghanistan.
Americans may know the best as both are together in Afghanistan.

Wheat! Flown!

Ever heard of that? What would the logistics cost? Would it be even possible? What would be the landed price of such wheat?

Man you need some serious help.

Why don't you just stop the smuggling (if it is happening) in Pakistan instead of blaming all and sundry.

 

[Vinod2070]

Yup. India is where all the atta is going. I don't know how anyone can export Pakistani atta. After Gilani to the "seat" he replaced the logistics head. I think this is why all this has happened.Sad to say but Pakistan is in a pretty bad situation.

Would you like to provide any proof of that. What is the basis of such statements? Why doesn't your government simply stop the smuggling?

Your problem is internal (and partly global shortages have exacerbated it). Passing the buck to India without any proof looks pathetic.

 

[Vinod2070]

And even the Merkel statement (if she really said this) is pathetic and useless. AFAIK, there has been no sudden increase in the indian grain consumption and the per capita grain availability is actually less than a few decades back.

India has turned from a net exporter to an occasional importer as the grain production has not kept pace with population and economic growth.

This is only a small part of the food issue in the world which is a combination of many other factors.

A simplistic approach to the problem is just not going to work.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

All those thousands of militants and terrorists going into India from Pakistan are carrying sacks of wheat piled up on their shoulders.

 

[maqsad]

This article is confirming that 2 million tonnes of wheat have vanished. OK so now that they know it has vanished why don't they start investigating? They know who grows it and sells it and they know who buys it. So where is the problem, why aren't they tracing the flow of money and the flow of wheat? Is it being sold in the black market? I don't understand. If they know it exists in the first place then they should be able to figure out who is holding vast quantities.

Wheat: where has the trading surplus gone?



By Ahmad Fraz Khan
​

THE biggest question mark lurking before the Punjab food planners these days is where the over two million tons of tradable surplus of wheat has gone.

Administrative measures involving law-enforcing agencies, policy reversals, increased commodity financing and direct raids on farmers and middlemen’s stocks have failed to deliver the desired results so far, going by the pace and volume of official wheat procurement drive in the province.

The government has, as usual, rushed to order imports ignoring the domestic factors responsible for the fiasco and letting the guilty go scot-free. While import of wheat is necessary, digging out the internal root-cause of the problem is equally important.

Target: The Punjab Food Department has so far procured only 2.1 million tons against its target of 4.3 million tons that includes procurement of around three million tons for Punjab, one million tons on behalf of the NWFP government and 300,000 for Balochistan. The Punjab Food Department was once talking about procuring over 4.5 million tons for the province alone. But, its procurement drive has nose dived; arrivals at its procurement centres have dropped to less than 50,000 tons (a paltry quantity during the peak procurement period) after touching over 100,000 tons for a few days.

The federal procurement agency, the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (Passco), has been able to procure around 0.7 million tons against its target of 1.5 million tons, despite increasing price twice by Rs10 per 40 kg to attract the farmers but failed.

Estimates: For the last 60 years, Pakistan has been calculating its wheat requirements and tradable surplus by two formulae: one is population-based and the other is based on market mechanism. This year, private market and official procurement situations defy these 60-year old tested formulae. Some two to four million tons of wheat somehow is still lying outside these formulae.

The country has adopted internationally accepted population-based formula, which says that every individual consumes around 124 kilograms of wheat annually. If we deduct the wheat required for the rural population based on this formula, the rest of it should come to the city markets for trading.

The current situation does not fit the frame. According to the Punjab Agriculture Department, the province has produced 16.3 million tons of wheat against the target of 18.5 million tons. To begin with, it concedes a crop reduction of around 2.2 million tons.

If 16.3 million tons production is taken as a baseline and the Punjab population at 100 million, the rural segment at the most comes around 700 million people who should not have kept more than 8.68 million tons of wheat. If seed requirements scientifically calculated at around 850,000 tons are also deducted, the figure comes to around 9.5 million tons. That means 6.8 million tons of wheat should have been in the market for trading. But the federal and provincial agencies have been successful in procuring only 2.8 million tons so far.

The other formula, based on historical market trends and calculations, becomes equally irrelevant when given a reality check. According to this formula, wheat growers keep around 70 per cent of the total production for feed and seed and the rest 30 per cent is traded in the market. That means out of 16.3 million tons, around 4.89 million tons of wheat should have become tradable surplus.

Confusion: Interesting theories are being cooked up by officials explaining the “missing” wheat stock. According to the Punjab Food Department officials, the farmers are hoarding the produce. But a majority of the farmers do no have holding capacity, which, in the past, has regularly led to price crash during harvesting season.

How can these poor farmers build such a holding capacity and that too beyond the sight of official agencies, which had been raiding every possible place for recovery of stock? Even individual buyers, who wanted to purchase wheat for domestic consumption, have not been able to do so for the fear of confiscation.

The millers think the investors have paid the farmers for their crop and asked them to keep the wheat within the confines of their homes as no agency would break in to check domestic storage. Now a question arises, can farmers hoard two to four million tons in their homes? The figure, interestingly, is more than the total indoor stocking capacity of the government agencies put together.

Unable to trace the hoarded wheat, the government has resorted to an easy solution: import the deficit amount. Even if over 2.5 million tons of wheat is imported to meet domestic food requirements, it is equally important to look into factors that affected wheat production this year.

Who delayed announcing the procurement price, and how much this delay affected the final yield. It should also look into the factors that caused 50 per cent drop in the use of phosphate fertiliser – its usage came down by 9.8 million bags in a single year. How the country missed the target for area under sowing by more than a staggering 1.2 million acres. The past mistakes and blunders identified should be avoided in future.

The Punjab government threw private sector out of procurement with every conceivable means – legal, administrative and financial. But the crisis has only worsened. Instead of being reactive to crisis on yearly basis, the government should find long-term solutions to such problems.

Wheat: where has the trading surplus gone? -DAWN - Business; May 26, 2008