‘Food crisis can create law, order situation’

* Expert recommends announcement of support price of wheat crop on cultivation time

By Manzoor Ali Shah

PESHAWAR: Experts here on Thursday voiced concern over the increasing prices of food items and said that food crisis might lead to law and order situation if not controlled in time.

Experts and researchers at the NWFP Agricultural University Peshawar told Daily Times that the food crisis reflects the lack of planning on the part of the government and growing prices of wheat flour and other food items in an agricultural country need to be worried about.

Professor Dr Said Wahab at the Food Science and Technology Department of the University said that easy access of the population to food was necessary and the government should prepare a plan for future to ensure the same. “If food crisis was not controlled, it might create a security situation and increase street crimes,” he said. He said that inflation in prices of food items is hitting the consumers hard, adding that dissolution of magistracy system which used to keep a check on food prices, had also contributed to the rise in prices.

Support price: “The government should announce the support price of a crop at the time of its cultivation which will encourage the farmers to sow it, but the recent increase in support price of wheat gave a chance to those people who have a monopoly over the market to steer it where they want,” he said.

Dr Mohamad Tahir at the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences said that agriculture mainly depends on nature and policy makers should be aware of this fact and plan accordingly.

“Recently the prices of rice have also recorded a surge and this is very strange given the facts that rice is not a staple item in Pakistani food and secondly Pakistan was among top five rice exporters,” he said. He said that the Frontier province is facing a dilemma as in the first place it has small cultivable land and if it sows more wheat, the production of sugarcane and tobacco would decline, which are cash crops.

“The Charsadda Road, Faqir Abad and other areas of Peshawar which were open lands and provided the city with vegetables in 1980s have now been turned into commercial areas and housing societies and fragmentation of the land is also hitting the agricultural production,” he said.

He said that there were provisions in law under President General Ayub’s government against the commercialisation of agricultural land and the government should invoke them.

He said that land in most of the southern districts of NWFP is barren due to shortage of water and if proper irrigation system is developed for these lands, Frontier province would be made self-sufficient in food. Chairman, Food Science and Technology Department, Prof Dr Javedullah said that proper planning is a key to solution of the problem and trained people should be inducted in the food department.

“Our policy makers do not consider Afghanistan while formulating their policies but Afghanistan directly influences our policies and this factor should be kept in mind while making policies,” he added.

As the flour and other edibles’ prices are on the rise in the country for the past several months, international organisation are cautioning against rising prices, poverty and food riots. This week World Bank head Robert Zoellick warned that around 100 million people in poor countries could be pushed deeper into poverty by spiralling prices, while the International Monetary Fund last week said hundreds of thousands of people were at risk of starvation because of food shortage.

United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Agency (FAO) report put Pakistan among the 37 countries where the food crisis looms. FAO Chief Jacques Diouf warned last week that food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor.

Home | National