HE announcement of an indicative wheat price of Rs4,500 per 40 kilograms may have come too late for Sindh farmers, but it is welcome as far as it goes. That is not far. The figure is Rs1,000 higher than last year`s and, by the government`s account, reflects rising production and fuel costs. It is also Rs500 short of what farmers demanded. And there is no word on who will buy the grain or when. An indicative price is a signal, not a guarantee. Since April 2025, when the government dropped the support price and suspended large-scale procurement, farmers have been promised a market-based system that would serve them better. It has not. The crop now being sown is the third to go into the ground without a floor. Punjab`s experience this April shows what happens when a procurement price is announced without a mechanism to enforce it. The province tried to revive buying through bank-backed private aggregators. The banks doubted the scheme`s viability, and the aggregators bought only 160,000 tonnes against a target of 2.5m tonnes. Prices fell anyway. A price no buyer is obliged or financially equipped to pay is only a number.

Growers seem to have grasped this before the government did.

Consumers, meanwhile, are not being spared. Over five years the price of wheat has gone up by 150pc, and that rise goes straight to the price of flour. Punjab has used the price as its only tool instead of working on the cost of farm inputs, which the federal government`s policies have kept high. Flour in cities is selling for Rs160-190 per kilogram, which is hard on poor households. Even the government`s stocks are expensive.

Sindh began selling government wheat this month at Rs12,500 per 100kg, or Rs5,000 per 40kg. That is more than the prime minister has offered farmers.

The test of wheat reform is not whether the government can step out of the market. It is whether the system that replaces government buying shares the risk fairly among farmers, traders, millers, banks, and the state, keeps flour affordable, and protects the country`s food supply. For now, farmers carry most of the risk while everyone else looks after their own interests. With sowing already underway, the government should say in plain terms what it will buy, through which agency, with what money, and by when.

It should adapt its imports to that plan. It should look at the cost of fertiliser and other inputs, instead of relying on price alone. And it should help poor households directly, instead of keeping flour cheap for all by squeezing the grower. A price announcement with no buyer behind it will not persuade anyone to sow, and a market that works for only one side is not worth defending.