FOREWORD

Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access
to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for
an active and healthy life. Agriculture is considered to be the lifeline of economy and most
vital instrument of food security of a country. The development of the agriculture sector
depends upon sound policy and plan based on the empirical data. Since 1968, the Economic
Wing of defunct Ministry of Food, Agriculture & Livestock is compiling and publishing the
Agricultural Statistics of Pakistan on yearly basis to facilitate policy makers and researchers
dealing with agriculture. After the reorganization of the Federal Secretariat and constitution
of Ministry of National Food Security and Research (NFS&R), the functions of Economic
Wing have been assigned to M/o NFS&R. This Ministry has the mandate to achieve the
goal of national food security endeavoring through innovative research and improved
national policies. Maintaining the necessary statistics pertaining to food and agriculture
sector is the principal objective in the direction to achieve this national goal that greatly
helps the researchers, academia and policy makers.

This publication is a part of concerted effort to provide concrete basis for

research in the field of agriculture and it contains data regarding production, consumption,
prices, imports and exports of food grains. The best feature of 51 st edition of this publication
is its comprehensiveness that it provides all sorts of data relating to agricultural sector of the
country which includes area, production and yield of crops. The data for the earlier period
commencing from 1998-99 through 2015-16 has also been provided for supporting time
series analysis I express my deep appreciation for the officers and staff of the Economic
Wing and also those involved in collection and compilation of data for this edition including
Federal and Provincial organizations.
I hope that the publication will serve as useful reference document on the
subject. Any productive criticism and suggestions to improve the publication are always
welcome.

(Fazal Abbas Maken)

Secretary
Islamabad
December, 2017