On the first of April, in Haroonabad, the wheat was ready. The harvesters had moved through the fields. Grain bags were stacked along the roadside. Tractor trolleys and trucks, heavy with wheat, were moving out of villages across Bahawalnagar. But the buyer, the system had promised, financed, operational, and ready to absorb the crop, was not there.

Pakistan's wheat harvest lasts roughly forty-five days, moving northward across Punjab from early April into mid-May. In those forty-five days, the price of the country's most important crop is formed. Kharif loans fall due. Storage decisions are made. Bargaining power is exercised or surrendered. What happens inside this window determines the farmer's income for the year, his ability to finance the next crop, and the direction of Pakistan's wheat economy.

For three consecutive seasons, Pakistan has entered that window unprepared.

The consequences are visible across Punjab's wheat belt: distress sales below cost, declining confidence, and farmers increasingly uncertain whether wheat still offers a viable return. These failures did not arise from drought or global shocks alone. They emerged from a mismatch between the speed at which agriculture moves and the speed at which Pakistan's institutions respond.

The sharper story is domestic: a procurement system that failed to arrive on time, an indicative price unsupported by operational buyers, and a market in which liquidity reached traders before it reached farmers.

Politicians think in electoral cycles. Economists think in fiscal years. Banks think in risk assessments. Bureaucracies think in notifications and file movement. The farmer lives on a different clock.

His loan falls due in April. His harvester is hired in April. His........

© The Friday Times