Farmers feel left out as budget sidelines agriculture

In the aftermath of the budget, farmers say they are feeling “angry, frustrated and helpless.” Of these emotions, they describe helplessness as the most devastating, as it leaves them with little hope and few options. Against this backdrop, they argue that the budget speech and accompanying documents appear to have all but forgotten a sector that contributes nearly a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), employs around 33 per cent of the workforce, feeds the nation, supplies raw materials to industry and underpins the rural economy. They point out that there is hardly any mention of agriculture, let alone any meaningful policy direction, planning or allocations. As a result, farmers say they feel abandoned and powerless. Khalid Khokhar, who heads Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, one of the country’s most active farmers’ organisations, sums up the mood within the farming community: “We had an idea of what was coming when the prime minister convened a meeting of farmers and other stakeholders barely two weeks before the budget — when the entire preparation process had effectively been completed — merely to constitute a committee for proposals. Without putting agriculture at the centre of economic planning, food security and growth will be harder to achieve Throughout the budget-making exercise, the finance minister never bothered to engage with farmers or seek their input. If farmers and their sector were forgotten during the preparation stage, they were naturally destined to be excluded from the final product. But still, the level of callousness is devastating for farming and the lives of its practitioners.” Echoing this sense of exclusion from policymaking, Muhammad Arshad, a small farmer from the outskirts of Lahore, says this year farmers had just one SOS — save our souls — plea and expectation: make agriculture economically viable. Instead, he says, the government ignored them entirely. The widening gap between food imports and exports should have served