March 27, 2006	Monday	Safar 26, 1427

Pakistan inherited a semi-feudal agrarian system. The ownership and control of land was highly concentrated in a few landlords and intermediaries who extracted maximum rent, either in cash or kind, from tenants.

Under this arrangement, the sharecropper or the tenant farmer had little economic motivation to develop farmland for increased production. Naturally, a cultivator who did not have security of tenure, and was required to pay a high proportion of output in rents, was less likely to invest in improvements of land, or use high yielding varieties or other expensive inputs likely to yield higher returns.

At the same time, the landlord was not concerned about improving the economic condition of the cultivators, which resulted in loss of agricultural productivity and oppression of tenants.

The poorest of the poor are the landless in rural areas, followed closely by the land-poor; those whose small landholding are too small or quality is too poor to support a family. They make up the majority of the rural poor and hungry. It is in rural areas where the worst poverty and hunger are found.

Evidence from around the world demonstrates that small, owner-operated farms typically produce more output per acre than large farms cultivated by means of wage labour or tenants.

A recent report on the relationship between farm size and total output in fifteen countries in the global South found that in all cases relatively smaller farms were more productive per unit area, by a factor of two to ten times. Small family farmers hold with secure land rights tend to be better environmental stewards, protecting and enhancing soil fertility, quality, and biodiversity.

Small farms tend to cultivate a bigger percentage of available land than large farms. Likewise, small farms tend to have a higher cropping intensity. They grow more crops per year on a given piece of land.

Small farms prefer to grow crops that are higher-value and more labour- intensive like vegetable cultivation. The cultivation of vegetables requires much more labour per acre than the cultivation of grains while at the same time vegetable cultivation yields much greater value per acre than other crops.

Finally, small farms often get higher yields per acre for any given crop, simply by virtue of putting more time and care into their farming. For these reasons, democratizing access to land is mandatory for sustainable rural development.

Worldwide land reform has been used as a powerful strategy for promoting both economic development and environmental quality. Land reform can be defined as the reallocation of rights to establish a more equitable distribution of farmland.

According to the final declaration of World Forum on Food Sovereignty held in Havana, Cuba on September 7, 2001 (civil society preparatory meeting for World Food Summit +5), agrarian reform, above all, should be recognized as an obligation of national governments, as this process is necessary within the framework of human rights and as an efficient public policy to combat poverty.

These agrarian reform processes must be controlled by peasant organizations-including land rental markets-and must guarantee both individual and collective rights of producers over shared lands, and be articulated within coherent agricultural and trade policies. The declaration opposed the policies and programmes for the commercialization of land promoted by the World Bank instead of true agrarian reforms by governments.

In Pakistan, out of 79.6 million hectares area, only 20 million hectares are available for farming. Irrigated agriculture is practiced on 16 million hectares and the remaining four million hectares are under rain-fed (Barani) farming.

Landlessness and the limited access to land is a glaring feature of rural poverty in Pakistan. The skewed distribution of land is a major obstacle, hindering the rapid reduction of rural poverty.

Data from the Agricultural Census Organization confirm the skewed distribution of operated land in Pakistan. About 81 per cent of country’s farmers own farms less than five hectares in size which account only 38.7 per cent of the total farm area.

On the other hand, large farmers with land holding of more than 10 hectares comprised only 6.8 per cent of country’s all farmers and account for 39.8 per cent of the total farm area.

The much skewed distribution of the size of farm holdings is very striking. Small farmers prefer farming systems that are more labour-intensive and less risky, while large farmers prefer farming systems that are more intensive in capital as they can afford to take risks in exchange for higher expected returns.

Poor families tend to have more children than non-poor ones since the poor rely heavily on their children for old-age and farming support. A high rate of population growth and population density in poor areas has already exacerbated the poverty problem.

Several attempts have been made in the past through land reforms aimed at reducing the concentration of land in few hands and reallocating the same to the landless farmers.

In 1959, Field Marshall Ayub Khan imposed ceilings on the private ownership of land. Individuals were limited to owning 500-acres of irrigated and 1,000 acres of un-irrigated land.

Large number of exemptions was provided for orchards as well as for transfer of land to heirs. Moreover, some four million hectares of land in West Pakistan, much of it in Sindh was allotted to civil and military officers belonging mostly to Punjab, which created hatred among Sindhi Haris (farmers) against Punjabi dominated establishment.

According to law, allotment of land resumed under land reforms and other government land can be made only to the landless farmers of the village or its neighbourhood where the land is located.

In 1972, President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto made an attempt to introduce land reforms. The Bhutto government lowered the ceiling to 150-acres of irrigated and 300-acres of un-irrigated land for private ownership. Owners of expropriated excess land received no compensation, and beneficiaries were not charged for land distributed.

The 1973 measure required landlords to pay all taxes, water charges, seed costs, and one-half of the cost of fertilizer and other inputs. It prohibited eviction of farmers as long as they cultivated the land, and it gave farmer first rights of purchase.

Other regulations increased tenants’ security of tenure and prescribed lower rent rates than had existed. Again In 1977, the Bhutto government further reduced land holding ceiling to 100 acres in irrigated areas and 200 acres in un-irrigated areas. Additional measure made agricultural income became taxable, although small farmers were exempted.

Reason for the failure of earlier land reforms was the well-established feudal culture that constitutes one of the most powerful lobbies in every set-up of governments since independence. The flaw in both cases was that; the feudal class that was going to be adversely affected by these reforms, was supposed to execute these reforms.

The landlords successfully failed attempts made to break up large estates or to lessen the power or privileges of the landed elite. In both earlier reforms, ceilings were in terms of individuals rather than families, providing opportunity to rural elite to circumvent the land reforms by acquiring land in the name of their wards and kin. As a result large, landowners managed to keep their holdings within an extended joint family framework and have given up only some marginal, not very productive, swampy lands. Another reason for the failure was the fact that successive governments have used land as a tool to strengthen their grip over power.

For the poverty alleviation, it is necessary to prepare blueprint for comprehensive land reforms, learning from the experience of other countries. The heart of any such reforms must be the principle that the tiller of the soil must become the real owner of the soil. Small landowners must be fully supported by government, particularly through liberal credits and technology.

The reform should be supported by development of efficient irrigation, rural electrification and rural roads and transport giving the needed impetus to the growth of agriculture and rural industries. All the reforms should be made combined with efforts for the reduction in population growth rate.

At present influential feudal dominate the co-operative organizations at the apex level. Most small farmers are unable to use the facility of cost free loans because of the cumbersome procedures. As a result, farmers heavily rely on informal sector credit which carries high interest rates but the convenience of service provided by them far exceeds what formal sector institutions have to offer.

The co-operative banking system should be strengthened to extend loans to farmers, to recover these loans and manage its affairs efficiently. These steps, if implemented in letter and spirit, will help in raising the incomes of small farmers and artisans and increasing the employment opportunities for the rural poor in general. These trends in agricultural growth will increases income and reduce poverty.