LAHORE: This season`s wheat harvest may face delays due to ongoing fasting and prolonged cool weather, affecting the already compromised yield. Experts describe the crop`s condition as `satisfactory but not healthy.`Any delay, experts fear, would lead to shriveling of grain, hitting average yield, and,ultimately, total national production. Crop from Sindh, which normally hits the market by mid-March, got delayed by afortnight this year and has just started arrivingin the market.

`Due to this delay, the Punjab Food Department was able to release additional 250,000 tonnes and meet demand of its southern part, which normally is fed from Sindh in March,` explains Majid Abdullah a miller from Lahore.

This arrival may now be further delayed by the arrival of Eidul Fitr that would halt transports activity by another week or so. The millersmay not feel any pressure for these delays as official coffers are meeting the demand, but delay in crop maturity would hit the crop and individual farmers, who would suffer yield loss.

Supporting Majid`s version, Farooq Bajwa, a farmer from South, says that wheat grain in most of the southern part is still green because of cool weather, especially nights.

Once weather changes its pattern and grain changes its colour, it would need another fortnight of high heat to get fully mature and ready for harvesting. Wheat crop in Cholistan area is ready for harvesting. The fear now is that if thesecooler nights bring rain as well in next two weeks, the crop would be in for bigger trouble, causing not only further delay but also a substantial cut in yield and financial loss.

Even now, wheat is being traded at mush less than official release price (Rs2,900) per 40 kilogram in the open market, causing massive loss to farmers. If they lose a part of yield as well, they would get a (financially) killing blow, Bajwa fears.

`Yes, any such loss may not alter the national picture as supply pressure would be met by the Punjab Food Department, which is stillholding over a million tonnes of wheat, but it would hit individual farmers and teach us importance of national strategic reserve, especially in new policy regime of `no official procurement,` says Muhammad Ishaque a wheat trader from the city.

The Punjab was able to meet this pressure in the month of March because it was holding additional wheat working as strategic reserve. Had it not been holding those reserves, he says, delay in Sindh harvesting could have turned into a nationalerisis.

The Punjab government is thinkingofprivatisingeventhatstrategicreserve.Itis convinced on the need of such a reserve, but wants a private party to hold them for the government.

This is a new policy initiative an uncharted territory that needs a thorough public debate. So, it would favour itself by holding a public debate on pitfalls of `no-procurement policy, its results and possible solutions,` instead of simply abdicating its role and let the market adjust itself that normally happens at the cost of weakest link (read farmers) of the market. `So, the key word remains debate, rather than abdicating,` he pleads.