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SEVENTY-SEVEN per cent of Pakistan’s more than 11 million farms are smaller than five acres, yet the country’s agricultural policies rarely reflect this reality. They fail to recognise that the survival of these farms depends heavily on women’s labour and ecological knowledge. Despite their central role, women remain largely invisible in agricultural policy, planning, and data.
Across Pakistan’s agroecological zones — in Punjab’s plains, Sindh’s deserts, and the mountain valleys of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan — women’s knowledge of soils, seeds, plants and seasonal rhythms has been refined over generations. They traditionally managed organic materials in ways that maintained soil fertility. They selected diverse crop varieties, preserving traits for soil types, water availability, taste, cookability, and resilience. These processes yielded thousands of seed varieties emerging from local ecosystems. They developed an intimate and holistic understanding of their local ecosystems, soil and plant health, and plant properties, including medicinal uses. Grandma’s remedies still come in handy to heal our minds and bodies.
Women also sustained livestock, which is a central pillar of food sovereignty. They fed and watered cattle, buffaloes, goats, sheep and poultry; collected fodder and grasses; milked animals; made yoghurt, lassi, cheese, butter and ghee; and applied traditional remedies for common illnesses. Their labour formed the bedrock of mixed crop-livestock systems, which nourished rural families and stabilised incomes.
But the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s dismissed the critical role of women. Their composting, nutrient-recycling and carbon-sequestering systems were abandoned in favour of synthetic fertilisers that initially boosted yields but eventually depleted soil organic matter and disrupted microbial life. Their seed-saving skills were replaced by commercial seeds that had to be purchased each season.
Women’s daily decisions shape the fertility of our soils.
Chemical inputs, including pesticides, replaced the centuries-old wisdom that had emerged from peaceful coexistence with nature. Their management of diverse cropping systems was undermined by monocultures. The ecological balance that women maintained — through mixed cropping, organic recycling, and careful water use — was pushed aside.
Despite their central role in sustaining small farms, rural women are too often reduced to unpaid labourers with ever-increasing workloads but no rights and no voice. They work longer hours than men, perform the most physically demanding tasks, and yet hold little to no decision-making authority over land, income or farm planning.
Today, Pakistan’s farms bear the consequences: declining soil fertility, widespread micronutrient deficiency, pesticide contamination, water depletion and a dangerous dependence on costly external inputs.
Food insecurity is rising even as production systems grow more fragile. The promise of the Green Revolution has given way to a landscape of ecological degradation and economic vulnerability. As climate change intensifies, as floods, droughts, and heatwaves become more frequent and as male out-migration increases, women’s responsibilities have grown heavier — while their rights remain unchanged.
Reversing this damage requires returning to the principles that women have long embodied: recycling organic matter, protecting genetic resources and biodiversity, and working with — and not against — ecological processes.
Agroecology does not replace traditional knowledge — it builds upon it. It gives a scientific and policy language to what women have practised for generations. It strengthens soil health, restores biodiversity, eliminates chemical dependence, and enhances climate resilience.
Pakistan’s agricultural future depends on recognising rural women not merely as workers but also as farmers, ecological stewards, innovators and leaders. Their daily decisions shape the fertility of our soils, the biodiversity of our fields, the health of our livestock and the nutrition of our families.
Women have sustained smallholder agriculture for generations. The time has come for our policies, institutions, and national imagination to place them at the centre — and to learn from the ecological wisdom they have safeguarded for centuries.
Empowering women is not an act of social benevolence; it is a practical necessity for environmental regeneration and food sovereignty.
The writer is an educationist, agroecologist and development activist.
Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2026
