Wheat Productivity, Efficiency, and Sustainability: A Stochastic Production Frontier Analysis

Abstract

The agriculture sector plays a crucial role in the overall development of the country. The sector shares about 24 percent of the GDP and employs about 44 percent of the workforce in the country. Crops sub-sector is the major contributor towards agriculture, sharing more than 53 percent of the value-added. Wheat, being the staple food of Pakistanis, carries immense importance: it contributes about 12 percent of sector value-added, is sown on about 37 percent of the total cropped area, and shares 80 percent in consumption of food grains, while its share in food grain production is around 70 percent. As primary diet, wheat alone shares about 50 percent of the total calories’ and proteins intake in Pakistan, and contributes about 8 percent of the total fat consumed [FAO (Various Issues]. Consequently, overall dietary well being of our people especially the urban and rural poor is largely dependent on the performance of wheat economy. Despite serious efforts made by the wheat breeders in developing new highyielding varieties during the past three decades, wheat production in Pakistan remained short of demand and thus import has been the only alternative to fill the gap. The present wheat requirement of the country is more than 20 million tonnes. It has been estimated that by the year 2020 wheat import would rise up to 15 million tones costing 2 billion US dollars [PARC (1996)]. The situation could worsen further if Pakistan fails to achieve a higher level of growth rate in wheat production and sustain it.