LAHORE: The police picked at least two tenants of Govt Seed Farm, Ehsanpur, in Kot Addu and seized a tractor for harvesting wheat in their fields on Thursday.

Anjuman Mazareen Punjab leader Mehr Ghulam Abbas termed the action a part of the corporate farming implementation plan.

The seed farm comprises around 2,500 acres being cultivated for generations by 300 tenants.

Abbas alleged that the police entered the houses of the tenants reaping the wheat crop, arrested two of them, manhandled women members of the families and seized the harvested crop as well as a tractor being used for harvesting. They loaded the crop onto a trolley and shifted it to the police station.

Tenants allege that it’s a part of corporate farming plan

As word of the police action spread to other tenants, they took to the roads. Led by women tenants, they blocked the Layyah-Kot Addu highway by staging a sit-in on it. Anjuman Mazareen Punjab and the Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) also threatened to come on roads across the province against the incident.

Forced by the prolonged blockade of the highway, the district administration released the arrested tenants as well as their tractor-trolley in the evening.

The PKRC has already planned to hold protests on Sunday (April 13) in around 30 districts against the corporate farming, building of six canals and in support of minimum wheat support price to be fixed at Rs4,000 per 40kg.

The South Asia Peasant Federation (SAPF) has expressed complete solidarity with PKRC.

SAPF President Prem Dangal and General Secretary Purushottam Sharma, in a joint statement, called upon the Pakistan government to withdraw the plan to corporatise agriculture in the name of the Green Pakistan Initiative (GPI) under pressure from the WTO and to protect small and medium farming in the country. It has also demanded an end to the eviction of the poor farmers from the lands they are cultivating since generations.

The SAPF said that corporate and multinational companies had their eyes set on South Asia’s agriculture and agricultural market and they were pressurising the governments through international institutions for the capture of these assets. It urged the governments to take strong steps for protecting their food security and small-medium farmers by establishing the model of ‘co-operative farming’ against the ‘corporatization of agriculture’ as 60pc of the population in the region was still dependent on agriculture.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2025