- In the event that CM Maryam falls short in her agricultural promises.
- Demand a support price of Rs5,000 per 40 kg to keep growers interested.
LAHORE: Punjabi farmers expressed their dissatisfaction with Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif’s decision to maintain the wheat support price from the previous year and warned to take legal action and stage protests if the government did not act.
According to Kisan Board Pakistan President Sardar Zafar Hussain, the chief minister “has failed her first trial on the agriculture front in the province” during a press conference on Friday.
“She has chosen to stick with the minimum support price of Rs3,900 per 40 kg of wheat from the previous year, even though the Sindh province raised it to Rs4,600 per 40 kg.”
Mr. Hussain, surrounded by Rashid Minhala, Akhtar Farooq Meo, and Sardar Ashfaq Dogar, urged the government to set the minimum support price at Rs5,000 per 40 kg in order to keep farmers interested in the crucial crop.
He contended that farmers ought to receive at least Rs1,100 more every 40 kg of grain support price, given the increases in fertilizer, insecticide, energy, diesel, and other input costs.
If not, he threatened, farmers will switch to more lucrative but other crops, forcing the government to import wheat at far higher prices.
He lamented that, in the event that wheat flour prices rose, the interests of the rural populace were being given up on the altar of urbanites’ “feared reaction.”
He claimed that giving farmers input subsidies is a better and other strategy for regulating flour prices.
He declared that the Kisan Board would take legal action against the government for the injustice done to the agricultural community and that they would also take to the streets to compel the ruling class to comply with their demands if the government did not alter the wheat support price.
In response to a question, he stated that the disparity in support prices between Punjab and Sindh will promote grain smuggling from Punjab to other provinces, leading to a crisis in the local marketplaces.
