Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi’s resolve to achieve food self-sufficiency by 2030 has come with an immediate test. The provincial government has announced direct wheat purchases from farmers this season, with a target of 225,000 tonnes at Rs3,500 per maund, payment within 24 hours, and a promise to fill official warehouses before the off-season.
It is a useful intervention, but not a plan. At best, it may ease market pressure for a few months. At worst, it may once again allow the province to confuse procurement with food security. The province has been here before. Every year, the same cycle returns with small variations. The harvest arrives, the government announces a procurement plan, growers complain about access, flour millers worry about supply, and consumers wait to see whether the market will remain stable. What rarely changes is the structure underneath. KP needs around five million tonnes of wheat annually for a population of nearly 41 million. Its own production remains around 1.4 million tonnes, leaving a shortfall of more than three million tonnes.
KP’s scattered holdings, rain-fed areas, mountainous terrain and limited irrigated acreage make wheat self-sufficiency difficult, but the real failure still lies elsewhere. For 13 years, PTI has governed KP with enough time to build a wheat-security architecture around a known weakness. It had the political continuity to improve yields, expand storage, protect small farmers, digitise procurement, and reduce the province’s vulnerability to supply disruptions. Yet the response has remained largely procurement-led, reactive and season-specific.
The production record is the strongest indictment. KP grows wheat on roughly 0.76 million to 0.78 million hectares, but its yield remains weak, below two tonnes per hectare. Punjab’s wheat yield is far higher, while we have ample evidence as to what sustained seed, irrigation, extension and procurement systems can achieve. If KP merely moved closer to Punjab’s yield on the same cultivated area, it could add around one million tonnes or more to local production, sharply reducing annual pressure. Procurement, therefore, cannot be treated as the centre of policy. It is the last stage of the chain.
The procurement record has also lacked continuity. In 2024, the province announced a target of 300,000 tonnes and began buying from local growers, but the final purchase fell short of the target. This year’s target is lower. Even if 225,000 tonnes are procured, that would cover only a small fraction of KP’s annual requirement. It may build some public stock. However, it does not come even close to ensuring food sufficiency. The province also needs to distinguish between its wheat-producing districts, deficit districts and transit markets. Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Mardan, Swabi, Charsadda and Nowshera should not be managed in the same way as remote deficit districts.
Instead of living under the shadows of the past, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa needs a government willing to treat food security as the crucial pillar of governance, not as damage control. *