Road leading to a food secure Pakistan may seem bumpy at first glance but it is certainly not out of question. In the last few years, food price inflation has been on a continuous upward trend making it difficult for low-income households to access basic eatables. As of July 2023, prices of basic food commodities have increased by 39.54 percent compared to the same month in 2022. The Global Hunger Index (GHI) rated Pakistan’s level of hunger as ‘serious’ ranking it at 99 out of 121 countries in 2023, from 88^th rank in 2020. This decline is more worrisome as it points towards governmental neglect and incompetence. Population growth, rising unemployment, bad governance, and income losses are the major factors behind the issue of food insecurity in Pakistan.

The agriculture sector was once the guarantor of Pakistan’s food security. Decades of neglect, misgovernance, and adhocism brought about disincentivized farming, exploitation of peasants, unregulated real estate development, soil degradation, and a host of environmental issues that subsequently undermined Pakistan’s agriculture sector. According to official estimates, the 2022 floods damaged up to 40 percent of the country’s agricultural output. Lower output means more food imports and that means higher prices of eatables in the market. Fixing this sorry state of affairs would require dynamic policymaking. Pakistan hardly has enough arable lands to feed a population of 240 million, but it does have enough lands to boost food exports significantly. Better policies would enable sustainable and profitable agriculture, that is, encouraging crops with higher export value such as cotton, and discouraging yields with lower value such as sugarcane. Export based agriculture would ensure wellbeing of the farmer and substantially increase purchasing power of the rural population.

Unemployment is another key factor of rising food insecurity. 6.4 percent of Pakistan’s 78 million workforce is said to be unemployed and the rate is expected to rise to 6.8 percent by the end of FY 23-24. That means nearly 10 million people will be deprived of regular incomes and their access to basic food commodities will be compromised. Higher unemployment rates point towards dismal economic output of the country; however, it is not new to Pakistan. Unemployment has continuously been rising since the 1990s and it has much to do with our outdated approach of creating new jobs. Greater chunk of Pakistan’s unemployed workforce lives in rural areas, where farming is the go-to profession. Farmers disconnect with the world prevents them from gaining profits. State either through digitization or intervention, should ensure farmers access to the global market. In this way, the entire agriculture sector will be incentivized with minimal investment and will exclude ‘middlemen and profiteers’ from the export process. Secondly, youth form the majority of Pakistan’s workforce. State needs to equip its youth with education, skill, and modern technology. Give them cheap internet access and they will find their own ways of earning.

Another issue aggravating food insecurity is the dismal state of governance in Pakistan. At the governmental level, delivery of services and the handling of resources are tales of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption. Pakistan has always been a poorly governed country due to variety of reasons including its colonial past and technological backwardness. In fact, all major issues being faced by Pakistan today stem from its flawed bureaucratic model and the worst possible governance as its result. It would require bold decisions and exemplary leadership to revamp the outdated governance model that exhibits legacy of the region’s colonial past. Civil service reforms and digitization of the state machinery are the two necessary aspects for improving the quality of governance in Pakistan. Since up-to 60 precent of the country’s population is below the age of 35, the government should also be representative of Pakistan’s right demographic print. Not only the induction of young people in governance is required but also the incorporation of their ideas and innovations. For instance, the declining agriculture sector points towards the dismal performance of provincial agriculture departments. Its revamp into a corporate target-based office would certainly uplift the entire sector.

Today, Pakistan finds itself in a do or die situation. As far as food insecurity is concerned, the problem has become chronic but still not incurable. Small steps in the right direction would be enough to begin with. Pakistan’s approach to deal with the issue of food security needs to be aggressive and updated. If the agriculture sector cannot feed 240 million people, then we need to generate our own exports to a level that would overcome trade deficit of agricultural products. If youth is unable to find mainstream jobs, equip them with information technology skills and gadgets so that they find new avenues of prosperity. In contemporary times, economically sound countries are technologically advanced. Without injecting technology in the economy, Pakistan can never achieve prosperity.