When flour becomes expensive, governments convene meetings. Stocks are released, subsidies announced and officials instructed to bring prices down. But when the wheat market collapses for the farmer, he is told that markets must be allowed to function.

Pakistan cannot keep treating the farmer’s loss as an acceptable price of affordable food. That contradiction sits at the centre of our wheat economy. The grower absorbs falling prices in the name of reform. Months later, the taxpayer finances relief from rising prices. Somewhere between the harvest and the flour shop, the promise that one hardship would prevent the other breaks down. Affordable flour is essential. But if the farmer’s loss does not secure lasting affordability, we must ask who benefits from the bargain.

Punjab’s experience this year illustrates the problem. Early sellers in South Punjab received around Rs3,000 per 40 kilograms at harvest, below the government’s announced benchmark of Rs3,500. Farmers who had spent months paying for seed, fertiliser, diesel and labour discovered that the reference price did not necessarily mean a buyer was available at that price.

The government envisaged strategic reserves of three million tonnes, including 2.5 million tonnes purchased through private aggregators. By the end of May, reported aggregator purchases stood at about 160,000 tonnes against a revised target of 860,000 tonnes.

Officials maintained that aggregators still had time to deliver stocks from September onwards. A company might fulfil a later stockholding obligation while offering little help to a farmer who needed to sell at harvest in April. Building reserves and supporting the harvest market are related tasks, but they are not interchangeable.

By October, wheat and flour prices are rising. Punjab approved a Rs10 billion subsidy and increased wheat allocations to flour mills. Protecting consumers was justified. But the farmer who had already sold cheaply could recover none of his loss from that intervention. He had surrendered his crop to the market. The state returned when........

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