Over the past few years, the prices of key inputs — fertilisers, pesticides, electricity, diesel, and agricultural machinery — have surged sharply, whereas crop prices globally have trended downward. This widening gap has turned the cultivation of many crops into a loss-making business for Pakistan’s farmers, particularly as the impact of climate change increasingly undermines crop yields.
Today, Pakistan’s crop sector faces two major challenges: climate change and declining cost competitiveness.
In response, farmers continue to demand support prices and subsidies. Yet, under mounting pressure from international financial institutions and amid the government’s tight fiscal constraints, any meaningful relief for the agriculture sector — beyond bank loans or politically motivated showcase projects of limited scale and scope — appears unlikely in the near future.
In the past, farming was a profitable venture — thoug
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