Tik tik tik-Pakistan’s Food Time Bomb
Pakistan’s food security is worsening despite lower reported hunger figures. Conflict-driven economic pressures, falling wheat production, inflation, rapid population growth, malnutrition, and weak agricultural policies threaten to push the country toward long-term chronic food insecurity.
FUTURE CRISIS | CH. SHER BAHADUR, Ex. PCS/ PMS
The release of the Global Report on Food Crises 2026 on 24 April 2026, produced by the Global Network Against Food Crises alongside UN agencies such as the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, has once again turned a harsh spotlight on Pakistan. The report’s headline numbers offer some relief: in terms of the absolute number of people facing acute food insecurity, Pakistan ranks eighth, with around 11 million affected individuals. Nigeria, at the top of the list, suffers a staggering 30.6 million. But to stop at these figures would be a dangerous oversimplification. The report itself cautions that comparisons across countries are not fully reliable because the proportion of the population analysed varies wildly. In Pakistan, the assessment covered only 21 percent of the total population, roughly 50.8 million people from 68 rural districts. In Nigeria, nearly 89 percent of the population was included. Had Pakistan applied a similarly wide lens, assessing its urban slums, peri-urban settlements, and all agricultural zones, the country would almost certainly rank much higher, possibly within the top three. The 2025 Global Hunger Index had already placed Pakistan at 106th out of 123 countries, in the “serious” hunger category. Statistical caveats aside, one reality is undeniable: Pakistan’s food security is dangerously fragile, and the trajectory points downward.
The ongoing war in Iran has long since ceased to be merely a geopolitical headline. It is now violently shaking the foundations of the global food and agricultural system. The conflict has directly disrupted fertiliser supply chains, with sanctions and logistical collapses reducing the availability of key inputs like urea and potash. Lower fertiliser usage means lower crop yields across many nations. Simultaneously, higher fuel prices, another consequence of regional instability, have driven up farm production costs, from running tractors to powering irrigation pumps. Freight and transportation expenses have followed suit, tightening global food supplies and pushing international prices upward. Pakistan will not remain immune. In fact, the shocks are already arriving on its doorstep. Domestic wheat production, the country’s staple crop and the very bedrock of its food security, has declined considerably in the most recent harvest due to unfavourable weather conditions. Unseasonal rains, heat spikes at critical growth stages, and water shortages have all played their part. Estimates vary, but a shortfall of between two and four million tonnes is expected. To prevent empty shelves, Pakistan will likely need to import wheat.
This is where the economic perfect storm gathers force. Pakistan’s economy is already gasping under weak exports and a persistently pressured external account. The country has long relied on workers’ remittances from the Gulf region to prop up its foreign exchange reserves. But the war in Iran and the widespread uncertainty across the Gulf, from shipping lanes to labour markets, threaten to disrupt these inflows. If remittances shrink at the same moment that wheat imports become unavoidable, the strain on foreign reserves could become critical. Inflation is also accelerating from within. Rising fuel prices are feeding into every sector, while the government’s own high taxes further erode the purchasing power of low-income households. For families already stretching every rupee to cover utilities and transport, the rising cost of a simple loaf of bread becomes a matter of survival.
Compounding these immediate pressures is Pakistan’s exceptional population growth rate of 2.55 percent, one of the highest in the world. Each year, millions of new mouths need feeding. Yet agricultural growth remains modest and increasingly vulnerable. Farm sizes are shrinking due to inheritance fragmentation and urban sprawl. River flows are declining because of upstream withdrawals and climate change. Rainfall has become erratic, temperatures are rising, and recurrent floods—like the devastating 2022 inundation—have become a recurring nightmare. Input prices, from seeds to diesel, are escalating. The result is a slow-motion collapse of the margin of safety that once existed in rural life. Beyond the question of calories, malnutrition is emerging as a parallel crisis. Around 40 percent of children under five are stunted, with prevalence rates even higher in remote rural areas. A generation ago, poor rural households had a cushion: access to milk, butter, or at least lassi—the nourishing liquid left after churning butter—which was abundantly available, often for free, in village homes. Today, economic pressures have smashed that cushion. Most families now sell every drop of milk and every single egg merely to meet daily household expenses or to pay exorbitant electricity bills. Their own nutritional needs are sacrificed. Livestock rearing has also become expensive as fodder costs rise, forcing many to reduce herd sizes. Consequently, a large segment of the population now subsists primarily on wheat and rice, meeting only basic caloric needs while suffering increasingly imbalanced diets. Protein, healthy fats, and micronutrients have become luxuries.
The immediate challenge for policymakers is clear: ensure the availability of wheat at affordable prices to avoid a repeat of the 2023 crisis, when nearly a dozen people died waiting in queues for subsidised flour. That memory still haunts the country. But the standard heavy-handed administrative measures, crackdowns on hoarders, fixed procurement targets, and price caps, have often backfired, creating black markets and disincentivising farmers. There is an alternative worth serious consideration. The government could allow flour mills to blend up to 10 percent maize with wheat flour during the current year. Pakistan already exports maize, and this season a larger crop is expected, thanks to an 8.9 percent increase in maize cultivated area in Punjab alone, coupled with comparatively favourable crop conditions. Such a blending policy could absorb a domestic maize surplus of around 1.5 to two million tonnes, reduce pressure on wheat stocks, and even add marginal nutritional variety. However, Pakistan currently lacks a formal composite flour policy, despite the growing need for one. This is exactly the kind of nimble, pragmatic intervention that a crisis demands.
Looking beyond the immediate season, one truth must be confronted. Pakistan’s agriculture sector possesses more than sufficient potential to feed the entire population using its existing land and water resources. The country is not land-constrained or water-constrained in absolute terms. The core problem is entirely man-made: misplaced priorities, flawed policies, weak planning, poor management, high levels of food loss and waste, and distorted market incentives that punish farmers while failing to protect consumers. How else to explain the recurring spectacle of farmers being forced to rotavate, to destroy, mature standing crops of potatoes, cabbages, or melons because market prices have collapsed below harvesting costs? This year, those crops have become stark examples of a systemic failure. Shortages of other crops persist simultaneously, not because of absolute scarcity, but because of broken links between production, storage, processing, and distribution. The government’s prevailing approach, dishing out subsidised tractors, machinery, solar tubewells, and agricultural loans, may decrease production costs for a small, already privileged segment of farmers, but it cannot develop the sector. What is required is a fundamental shift toward comprehensive crop planning, productivity-driven policies, and an improved agricultural marketing system that guarantees farmers fair prices and predictable demand. Without such structural reform, Pakistan will not merely face periodic food stress. It will slide inexorably toward chronic, endemic food insecurity, with the 11 million figure in the latest global report looking, in retrospect, like the good old days.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ch. Sher Bahadur (Ex. PCS/PMS) is a former civil servant and policy observer with experience in governance, public administration, and rural development. His writing focuses on agriculture, food security, economic policy, and public sector challenges, offering research-based perspectives on sustainable development and long-term policy reform in Pakistan.
REFERENCES
Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC)
https://www.fightfoodcrises.netWorld Food Programme (WFP)
https://www.wfp.orgFood and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
https://www.fao.orgGlobal Hunger Index
https://www.globalhungerindex.orgWorld Bank – Agriculture & Food
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculturePakistan Bureau of Statistics
https://www.pbs.gov.pkMinistry of National Food Security & Research (Pakistan)
https://www.mnfsr.gov.pkState Bank of Pakistan
https://www.sbp.org.pkInternational Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
https://www.ifpri.orgUN Sustainable Development Goal 2 – Zero Hunger
https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal2
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