Across Pakistan’s countryside, millions of peasants and small farmers labour long hours to feed the nation. Yet fair compensation for their crops has become increasingly out of reach. Over the past decade, successive governments have steadily dismantled the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system; a policy historically designed to protect farmers from market volatility and ensure stable incomes.
This retreat did not happen by accident. It followed the conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the state’s growing commitment to neoliberal economic policy.
What we are witnessing today is not merely a policy adjustment. It is a structural transformation of Pakistan’s agricultural economy; one that shifts power from farmers and public institutions toward corporate intermediaries and financial actors.
For decades, the MSP system served as a basic safeguard for farmers. By guaranteeing a minimum price and ensuring state procurement through institutions such as the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO), the policy provided a degree of stability in an otherwise unpredictable agricultural economy. Small farmers could at least count on recovering part of their production costs and maintaining a modest livelihood. Today, however, this safety net is rapidly disappearing.
Wheat, the country’s staple crop, forms the backbone of rural livelihoods and national food security and sovereignty through this protected system. As of the 2023–24 fiscal year, wheat was cultivated on 9.6 million hectares (37 percent of the total cropped area) in Pakistan, contributing 9.0 percent to agricultural value added and 2.2 percent to the national GDP. The public procurement mechanism ensured that farmers had a reliable buyer, regardless of market fluctuations, while maintaining strategic food reserves for the nation.
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