Going by the stubbornly high hunger numbers year after year, the entire world appears off-track in its resolve to ensure access by all people to safe, nutritious and sufficient food in the next six years. However, the situation gets particularly worrisome in countries like Pakistan that rely on agriculture for not just food availability but for almost 60 per cent of its gross domestic output and a livelihood to 43 per cent of the workforce.
Against such a scenario where every step counts, little attention is paid to the myriad challenges looming over this crucial sector. As if rapid climate change and the Damoclean sword of floods were not enough, the corporate greed of housing societies to spread their footprint in far-flung areas at the expense of our food basket remains largely unaddressed.
As cities expand, valuable agricultural land is being converted into a brightly-lit hotchpotch of carpeted roads and scanty development while the state remains oblivious to the fast-declining production of essential food crops. An audit report revealed how an astonishing 630,776 kanals of agricultural land were converted into housing societies and townships during the last three decades in Punjab alone.
The rising crunch is similarly turning large swathes of green lands across Sindh into concrete jungles. When asked about the disappearing mango orchards and the drastically altered landscape, both the authorities and the real estate developers respond with vague platitudes. That said, the subsistence farmers’ interest in parting ways with their once-beloved holdings is well-understood, in light of the “discouraging” agricultural policies.
Economic reforms have left Pakistani agriculture extremely vulnerable to global market fluctuations, exacerbated by inconsistent government plans. Sandwiched between a shortage of fertilisers, skyrocketing electricity tariffs and unavailability of support prices, what else can the ordinary farmer do than to avail any possible opportunity to earn a few extra bucks?
After all, it is not their fault that the burden of feeding a population surging past 240-million mark has been conveniently dropped on their shoulders. *