If the Wheat Price Is Not Fixed, the Farmer Is in Loss Before Sowing Begins

The sequence repeats every year. A farmer sows the seed, spends months working the field, and only learns what his labour was worth when the crop is already standing ready. This time the government says the order will be reversed: the wheat price will be settled before sowing. At the first meeting of the National Agricultural and Food Security Council, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said wheat stocks were sufficient for domestic needs, warned that hoarders would get no leniency, and promised a price decided in consultation with the provinces and announced soon.

For the farmer, timing is the whole story. A price announced after harvest is not information; it is a verdict someone else has delivered on his season. A price known before sowing lets him calculate — how much land to give to wheat, how much fertiliser he can afford, whether a loan makes sense at all. For small and medium growers, that difference is often the line between a profit and a loss. The meeting kept that group in focus, listing cheaper fertiliser, quality seed, machinery and better water use as priorities. The direction is right. But farmers judge receipts, not speeches: whether fertiliser actually reached them at the official rate will matter more than any announcement.

Standing opposite is everyone who buys flour. Set wheat too high and roti follows it up, shaking every household budget in the country. That is why the prime minister held both ends of the argument in the same breath — a fair return for the grower, an affordable price for the consumer. On paper the balance looks tidy. In practice it is the old test on which governments have leaned one way, then the other, for decades.

Our view is simple. The real news will not be the number in the announcement; it will be its date. If the price lands before sowing begins, with the provinces genuinely on board, this council will have done in its first meeting the job it was created for. If it drifts towards harvest time, it becomes one more well-minuted conversation. The farmer is standing in his field making decisions today. He needs the price today, not a press release tomorrow.