The policy package for Corporate Agriculture Farming (CAF) approved by the Musharraf cabinet has been a matter of great controversy within the government circles, civil society organizations and small farmers’ groups. It claims that the policy would bring foreign investors, latest machinery and new methods of cultivation in the country. This would increase agricultural production and improve its quality.

The CAF sector would enjoy the status of an industry with sufficient credit facilities available with the banks for corporate entities. There would be no upper ceiling on land holding and a legal cover would be given to investors by amending Land Reform Act 1977 Section 7 of MLR 115 and Section 8 of MLR 64. State land would either be sold or leased to potential investors for 50 years, extendable to another similar period. Import of agricultural machinery for CAF would be exempted from customs duty. The duty on transfer of land to corporate agriculture companies would also be exempted. Land Reforms Act 1977 would have to be amended by including definition of Corporate Agriculture Farming in Article 2 as well as to incorporate the verdict by Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court in 1991 which allows the state to acquire any land any where in the country. While CAF policy is one step ahead from that of the verdict. It has been designed for the convenience of investors, while ignoring landless poor farmers.

CAF is a model for wealthy countries that pursue industrialised agriculture. It denies the interest and needs of billions of small vulnerable farmers who do not live in that world. After World War II, developed countries provided huge subsidies to their agriculture sector to overcome the food shortage. But the situation in Pakistan is very different. Agriculture sector is still under developed. The withdrawal of subsidies and domestic support and imposition of GST on fertilizers and increase in power tariffs are already pushing the farmers towards wall. Now the CAF policy would further aggravate their vulnerability and problems. The policy provides more privileges to corporate investors in the name of attracting foreign investment.

More than 45% people in Pakistan generate income from agriculture sector and 93% of them are small farmers, having very meager resources to afford hi-tech machinery for cultivation. The corporate farming investors equipped with latest machinery and capital would leave the small farmers far behind them. Similarly, corporate firms would be more interested in cash crops instead of food crops. Therefore, they might promote monoculture-cropping system, which could be a direct risk to our food security. The local resources would then no more be in the hands of small farmers and their food security would be at stake, as their production would not remain competitive in the market. The farmers would either get jobs without labour laws or migrate to cities for job thus burdening the civic planning and management. This would ultimately increase levels of poverty.

The supporters of CAF claim that there would be an increase in production and economic activity. Pakistan recorded bumper wheat production during last two years, but many people and cattle died from hunger. It shows that our food distribution mechanism needs to be addressed seriously. That is why the poverty genie is out of bottle instead of the policies and assistance provided by the International Financing Institutions (IFIs).

CAF is capital oriented and not labour conducive. The import of agricultural implements would damage the local implements manufacturing

industry in Mian Channu and Okara, both in Punjab. The local agricultural implements manufacturing industry should be promoted and protected by not allowing exemption on duty on import of implements to corporate companies.

The focus of agricultural corporate sector is on the state land in Pakistan. Although Supreme Court’s verdict gives the state a right to acquire land, but it does not mean that the land would be sold or leased to foreign companies. The local communities, the besieged tenants, the landless poor, the vulnerable downtrodden should be given the cultivable wasteland owned by the government. It would bring them out of the poverty trap and provide them better livelihoods.

Implementation of CAF policy would result into massive eviction of indigenous communities living in Balochistan, Cholistan, Thal and certain other areas. They are already drought ridden and their vulnerability would be increased further when they would be pressurized to evacuate from the land for the corporate masters. The displaced communities due to building of mega-projects were still unable to resettle. The harassment of tenants in Punjab was another glaring example of corporatization of agriculture sector. They have been tilling the land for the last hundred years. Now they are being besieged, harassed and killed by the government agencies to evict the land.

The cultivable wasteland in Cholistan (Bahawalpur and Rahimyarkhan,) is 6.6 million acres with 1.2 million inhabitants. Since 1978, only 350000 acres were allotted to its 30000 applicants while 5784 applications are still pending. All the people who were allotted the lands are now in better economic conditions as compared to the majority of the poor landless Rohailas (inhabitants). The allotment of the land is banned regardless of the promises and commitments made by the successive governments to allot the land to the landless Rohailas. It seems that the government wants to bring these Rohailas and people in other parts of the country to the same fate as of tenants in Pirowal and Okara.

After land, water is another important issue that should be seen in the CAF perspective. FAO is focusing on “Water: a Source of Food Security” and says "the world can find enough water to produce the food needed for future generations, if we manage water wisely, now!" Agriculture consumes 70 percent of the freshwater harnessing. And by the year 2030, the world would require 60% more food, 80% of which would be agriculture based produced through irrigation of water.

In Pakistan, rapid depletion of water and its distribution among the provinces has already been a very contentious issue. Indus River System Authority (IRSA) is unable to cater to the water needs of corporate farms to be established on the cultivable wastelands as this system could hardly meet the requirements of the provinces. To meet water requirement, if corporate farms would harvest water from underground sources, the water table would further go down.

Pakistan is a signatory to United Nation Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). A report submitted in April 2002 by the government to UNCCD secretariat says the state owned lands would be distributed among the poor to reduce poverty. Similarly, in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, government clearly says the state owned land would be distributed among the poor to bring them out of vicious circle of poverty.

It is necessary for us to look into the realities on ground. CAF was developed in the developed countries by allowing huge subsidies by the government to agriculture sector, while we are introducing the policy in the perspective of trade liberalization under which our farmers would have to compete with the corporate sector without subsidies and protections. This would badly affect our farming and subsistence agriculture thus plunging the poor into deep poverty trap. To evolve a national consensus on the CAF policy of Musharraf government, the parliament should discuss pros and cons of this policy to save our farmers and agriculture from the clutches of the multinational corporations in the name of corporate agriculture farming.