LAHORE: The federal government’s Green Pakistan Initiative aimed at introducing the latest farming on 4.4 million acres of land across the country has elicited a mixed reaction from various walks of life.

The government is eyeing to fetch around $40bn during the next five years through the agricultural initiative and hopes to create four million jobs through this process.

A group of farmers believes that the government should have, instead, distributed the cultivable waste lands among the local landless people instead of offering the same to foreign investors. However, traders welcome it as a positive development.

The Pakistan Kisan Rabita Committee says it is the same corporate farming initiative the government has been trying to introduce since the Gen Pervez Musharraf regime but with new terminology like attracting foreign investment and creating millions of jobs.

Farmers term foreign investment, jobs mere traps

Lamenting that instead of introducing land reforms, the government is attempting to strengthen the feudal system through corporate farming, PKRC General Secretary Farooq Tariq terms the policy anti-smallholders and landless peasants.

He claims that notwithstanding Lahore High Court (LHC) orders, many tracts of land, like those in Khushab district, have already been undertaken under the so-called Green Revolution Initiative which, he says, is bound to fail like the one introduced in the 1960s.

The Ayub era initiative, Tariq says, had damaged lands and their productivity in the long-term by introducing chemical fertilisers and pesticides. He demands the government give these lands to landless peasants for improving national food security.

Sikander F Bhadera, a progressive farmer from Bahawalnagar, endorses the views of Tariq, arguing that technology transfer will only happen if foreign investors are made to launch joint ventures in collaboration with the local farmers.

It could have been a good initiative if local farmers had also been made part of it to bring about a true agricultural revolution and eliminate rural poverty, he adds.

Otherwise, the technology will remain confined to the farms to be owned by the foreign investors, he warns, calling for reviving the agriculture cooperatives with some better model and structural reforms to improve indigenous farm productivity.

The Progressive Group, a representative platform of traders and industrialists from Lahore, has welcomed the Green Pakistan Initiative launched by the civil and military leadership to boost the agricultural sector of the country, which is the mainstay of the economy.

Progressive Group’s leader Ejaz Tanveer lauds the initiative as a tool for attracting investment and paving the way for prosperity of rural areas. He calls for ensuring that the next government also takes ownership of this programme as time for the incumbent rulers is short. He says it should also be ensured that the country goes towards the value addition of agricultural and horticulture commodities to fetch suitable prices from the global market.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2023