Food security has become the central focus of political discourse. It has, therefore, been imperative to look at the various facets of grain producing machine i.e. Punjab. In this study, the current farm debt situation has been captured. The time series analysis has shown that total farm debt in ten years (i.e. 1997 to 2008) has multiplied by five times and debt per farm family has gone up six times over the same period. The burden of interest payments on the farm sector now eats up almost 14 per cent of annual farm income of the state. It must be mentioned that this study is strictly confined to estimation of incidence and amount of farm debt, its structure and composition, and burden on the farm sector. The more important, but also more complex and contentious issues of causes, consequences and solutions of farm debt problem are not even touched in this study. Not because of any lack of interest in these important aspects of farm debt question, but owing to these being more difficult to deal with even at a lesser degree of scientific rigour. These aspects of farm debt problem are influenced by so many macro economic, sociological and political factors that it is difficult to disentangle their effects to arrive at any meaningful conclusion.
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