I SUGGEST you sit down before you read this. Robert Mugabe is right. At last week’s global food summit he was the only leader to speak of “the importance of land in agricultural production and food security”. Countries should follow Zimbabwe’s lead, he said, in democratising ownership.

Of course, he has done just the opposite. He has evicted his opponents and given land to his supporters. He has failed to support the new settlements with credit or expertise, with the result that farming in Zimbabwe has collapsed. The country was in desperate need of land reform when Mugabe became president. It remains in desperate need of land reform today.

But he is right in theory. Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen, and has since been confirmed by dozens of studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are 20 times as productive as farms of more than 10 hectares. Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Philippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere.

The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There’s a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries such as Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land.

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers. Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don’t have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; and they might grow several crops in the same field.

In the early days of the green revolution, this relationship seemed to go into reverse: the bigger farms, with access to credit, were able to invest in new varieties and boost their yields. But as the new varieties have spread to smaller farmers, the inverse relationship has reasserted itself. If governments are serious about feeding the world, they should be breaking up large landholdings, redistributing them to the poor and concentrating their research and their funding on supporting small farms.

There are plenty of other reasons for defending small farmers in poor countries. The economic miracles in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan arose from their land reform programmes. Peasant farmers used the cash they made to build small businesses. The same thing seems to have happened in China, though it was delayed for 40 years by collectivisation and the Great Leap Backwards: the economic benefits of the redistribution that began in 1949 were not felt until the early ’80s.

Growth based on small farms tends to be more equitable than growth built around capital-intensive industries. Though their land is used intensively, the total ecological impact of smallholdings is lower. When small farms are bought up by big ones, the displaced workers move into new land to try to scratch out a living. I once followed evicted peasants from the Brazilian state of Maranho 2,000 miles across the Amazon to the land of the Yanomami people, then watched them rip it apart.

But the prejudice against small farmers is unchallengeable. It gives rise to the oddest insult in the English language: when you call someone a peasant, you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive. Peasants are detested by capitalists and communists alike. Both have sought to seize peasants’ land, and have a powerful vested interest in demeaning and demonising them.

In its profile of Turkey, the country whose small farmers are 20 times more productive than its large ones, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation states that, as a result of small landholdings, “farm output ... remains low”. The OECD states: “Stopping land fragmentation ... and consolidating the highly fragmented land is indispensable for raising agricultural productivity.” Neither body provides any supporting evidence. A rootless, half-starved labouring class suits capital very well.

Like Mugabe, the donor countries and the big international bodies loudly demand that small farmers be supported, while quietly shafting them. Last week’s Rome food summit agreed “to help farmers, particularly small-scale producers, increase production and integrate with local, regional, and international markets”. But when, earlier this year, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge proposed a means of doing just this, the US, Australia and Canada refused to endorse it as it offended big business, while the United Kingdom remains the only country that won’t reveal whether or not it supports the study.

Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production, and by developing plants that either won’t breed true or don’t reproduce at all, big business ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world.

As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers’ stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up. The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. For many years, well-meaning liberals have supported the fair trade movement because of the benefits it delivers directly to the people it buys from. But the structure of the global food market is changing so rapidly that fair trade is now becoming one of the few means by which small farmers in poor nations might survive. A shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight. Fair trade might now be necessary not only as a means of redistributing income, but also to feed the world.

—The Guardian, London

THE problem fundamental to the ailments of this country has been a judiciary servile to each succeeding government.

A free and independent judiciary is an absolute need of a country to provide justice to the people and for political stability and economic development.

A government functioning under an independent judiciary lasts longer, works correctly and efficiently, as it is aware of its duty of functioning under the law. It is therefore not vulnerable to adventurers. The fact that it functions under the watchful eyes of an independent judiciary gives a government unmatched protection which is better than even repealing Article 58-2(b). Without an independent judiciary it is not possible to stop a usurper taking over and re-imposing 58-2(b) or anything else he invents. He will bulldoze through everything including any ‘constitutional package’. As in the past, a compliant judiciary will ignore the lawful government and facilitate the adventurer.

Absence of an independent judiciary suits only a usurper, not an elected government unless the aim of its leaders is other than governance. A government functioning under an independent judiciary enjoys the confidence of the people and the world has confidence in such a country. Always remember, this ‘confidence factor’ is fundamental to the success of a government and the progress of the country.

When people have confidence they bond with their government. It is the participation of 160 million people that will help the country move forward and not a dictator or unscrupulous politicians working under a muzzled judiciary. When the confidence factor is there, people don’t send their money abroad but invest it in their own country. That is when the country really progresses.

A government functioning under an independent judiciary does not have to have road shows, spending millions of dollars on foreign trips to attract investors. You don’t have to teach the world geography by requesting people to invest here based on the claim that ‘Pakistan is the hub of Central Asia’, a pet phrase of Shaukat Aziz and Pervez Musharraf in the eight years when they presided over the economy. The world ignored the absence of the confidence factor.

International investors are smart. They have to risk their money; they know the world geography better. Pakistan may be the hub of Central Asia but the investor knows the judiciary is not independent, lawlessness is internally created; and there is no justice. When he is pitched against the state or a bigwig neither the investor’s money nor his rights are protected. He will not come and invest irrespective of what you say.

Why does the investment pour into other countries of the region like India, Singapore or Malaysia? Why have they shot up to success and glory and we remain stuck in backwardness? It is not just because they are democracies but more so because their judiciaries are independent.

It is the duty of the parliamentarians of the majority party to force their errant leaders to restore the Nov 2 judiciary; remove a blatant constitutional violation and now let the country move forward. At a meeting of the PPP MNAs with Mr Zardari on May 16, only one MNA — a woman — stood up to tell her leader that the judges’ restoration was long overdue.

Was it the fault of the independent judges that a dictator purportedly removed them? Briefly, they set aside the sale of Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM) by the Musharraf government for Rs21bn when PSM land alone was worth over Rs60bn. They took notice of human rights violations of the people. Action was taken in cases of gang rapes, child marriages, disappearance of people picked up by the agencies and the high-handedness of the authorities. The judges brought much relief to the people and required the administration to act according to the law.

And when Musharraf’s most immoral and illegal creation, the NRO, came up before the bench of the Chief Justice for judicial review, the court suspended any benefits intended to be derived from the ordinance. The final judgment was to be passed after hearing all the parties.

The independent judges were considered a threat to the dream of a second illegal term of the presidency by a man insensitive to the welfare of this country and indeed to the agony of his compatriots. He betrayed his mindset when he accused innocent rape victims of seeking publicity and money to get immigration to rich countries.

We have already wasted 60 years while other countries have moved on. Please stop wasting more time by introducing new ‘packages’. It is time to undo the illegalities of the dictator as advised by the top and independent legal minds of the country. A purely legal issue should not be politicised. Even with respect to political matters remember the well known saying: nothing is politically right, which is morally wrong and let Pakistan move forward.

The emergence of an independent judiciary from the year 2005 under the Honourable Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was the result of an evolutionary process of 58 years of trials and tribulations of this unfortunate country. Tampering with it will mean that many more years will be needed for this institution to re-emerge as independent.

The writer is senior partner of the law firm, Amhurst Brown, in Islamabad.
ma@amhurstbrown.com