The interplay between agriculture and food security is the foundational challenge for Pakistan’s government. As an agrarian economy, the health of its farms directly dictates the well-being of its rapidly growing population. While the government has consistently acknowledged this reality—most recently through strategic policies and a landmark digital census—the persistent gap between national production potential and equitable access to nutritious food calls for a more profound and systemic transformation.
The current administration has demonstrated a modern, data-driven approach. The 7th Agricultural Census 2024, Pakistan’s first-ever integrated digital exercise, is a testament to the commitment to evidence-based policy. This provides the granular data necessary to tailor subsidies, credit schemes, and climate-resilient programs to smallholders, who represent the majority of farm households. Furthermore, the commitment to enhancing investment, as seen in the Investment Policy 2023 allowing 100% foreign stake in corporate farming, signals a much-needed push for modernization, technology transfer, and infrastructure development, such as the proposed electronic warehouse receipt-enabled silos to curb post-harvest losses.
However, the paradox remains stark. Despite being a major producer of crops like wheat, rice, and sugarcane, Pakistan ranks poorly on global hunger and food security indices. The issue is less about availability—the country often produces surpluses—and overwhelmingly about access, stability, and utilization.
The Federal Committee on Agriculture’s focus on enhancing per-acre productivity and ensuring affordable inputs is commendable, but these supply-side interventions often fail to solve the deeper, structural problems. High inflation, economic instability, and climate shocks disproportionately affect the poorest, limiting their purchasing power and, consequently, their access to a diverse, nutritious diet. This is a crucial factor in the country’s severe malnutrition and stunting rates, which cannot be solved by wheat self-sufficiency alone.
To bridge this chasm, government policy must pivot from a purely commodity-centric approach to a food system-centric one. This requires a multi-pronged strategy:
Shifting policy incentives and research away from over-reliance on a few staple crops towards high-value agriculture, livestock, and fisheries—areas where Pakistan has vast potential for both food security and exportable surplus.
The political economy of food, including the roles of middlemen and ineffective market regulation, must be reformed to ensure fair prices for both farmers and consumers.
Climate-Smart Agriculture: Given Pakistan’s high vulnerability to floods and droughts, public spending must be channeled into water conservation technologies, drought-resistant seeds, and robust disaster preparedness systems.
Food security must be intrinsically linked with nutritional outcomes, especially for women and children. This requires cross-sectoral coordination on health, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), as malnutrition is often driven by utilization issues rather than just caloric intake.
The foundation for a genuine revolution in agriculture and food security has been laid with the government’s digital and investment-focused initiatives. The next, most critical step is to leverage this new data and capital not just to produce more, but to ensure that the produce is efficiently stored, fairly distributed, and economically accessible to every Pakistani household. Only then can the nation truly achieve its goal of a food-secure and prosperous future.