Crop zoning has, over the past two years, come to be regarded as one of the first strategies raised whenever a federal or provincial agriculture meeting is held to discuss the sector’s needs. This strategy is documented everywhere: in growth strategies, donor concept notes, food security roadmaps, and even committee minutes. In almost every meeting, decisions are made about who enforces a zone, under which law, and with what money.
It is often assumed that Pakistan still doesn’t know the map of its crops and that identifying it will lead to appropriate cropping patterns. However, we know that already.
In February 2024, the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council introduced an updated version of the Agro-Ecological Zones of Pakistan. This project not only rebuilt the 1980s framework but also attached suitability data for 25 kharif and rabi crops across ten zones.
In collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Punjab has mapped the suitability of more than 50 crops. Urban Unit updated the agro-ecological zones at division level on agro-climatic and edaphic variables for the Punjab Spatial Strategy 2047. The unit also redefined the following regional plans, along with the identification of high-value crop zones down to the tehsil level: citrus around Sargodha, mango across the Multan belt, cotton and oilseed in the south.
Pakistan has spent four decades mapping where crops belong but has not built a mechanism that could make the maps matter to a farmer
The collaborative efforts of these institutions and the use of multiple methodologies have yielded convergent results. The recommendation to cluster each crop into its zone, attach specialised support systems, and build the value chain around them has been repeated in multiple plans. The gap has been diagnosed. But the delivery mechanism for turning a suitability map into a planting decision has never been built.
The cost of this gap is already visible in the field. Sugarcane keeps moving into the cotton districts, which has led to a significant decrease in cotton output ie from 15 million bales to 5.5m bales. Despite ongoing provincial planning for export-oriented agriculture, our cropping pattern is moving in the opposite direction.
There is no farmer ignorance being reflected in the pattern. Cane has zero water cost and a fixed price, while cotton has price uncertainty and pest risk. Under such circumstances, a suitability map does not compete with ignorance but with the cash flow, which can’t be calculated at this point.
Punjab has two unused instruments for crop zoning that haven’t been explored yet.
The first is statutory. Notified under the Punjab Local Governments Land Use Plan (Classification, Reclassification and Redevelopment) Rules, 2020, District Land Use and Zoning Plans have been prepared and approved. These legal instruments are an official set of rules that divides the land into specified zones for residential, industrial, and agricultural use.
The second is combining fiscal policies and digital technologies. The payment rail enabled by Kissan Card provides a farmer registry along with land records, which were missing in earlier attempts at crop mapping.
Joining these two instruments can transform crop mapping into crop zoning. A farmer whose aquifer doesn’t support cane still has the right to plant. The change will be in the per-acre payment, the tubewell tariff, along with the subsidised credit line. There is no policing of heavy zoning. Nothing is banned, and the state stops backing a result that is not viable.
Successful implementation of crop zoning depends on two conditions. First, water must be treated as the primary variable in defining the zones. Second, the subsidies and incentives offered to farmers must be crop-specific, rather than generalised across all crops.
The primary zoning variable must be water. Every specified zone must have a water budget: the rate at which water is used must not exceed the amount of water replenished naturally plus the abstraction of sustainable groundwater. The 1980s framework relied on soil, climate, and landform; the new framework will rely on water. Without this, suitability can only show the potential rather than what is realistically possible.
The Crop Reporting Service of Punjab, satellite crop mapping, along with Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission’s (Suparco) imagery, should ensure the payment from Kissan Card holders, making zoning an action rather than a document.
National dimension should also be considered. The aThe agricultural sector is provincial, so there is no federal involvement unless it relates to supporting prices or coordinating purchasing. The only forum that can set a baseline is the Council of Common Interests. The implementation of any plan stays with the province. The removal of reserved-area restrictions by the deregulation of sugar in January, without finding a replacement, has left a vacuum and made sequencing urgent.
Punjab has made multiple payments for the static maps. The gap arises in keeping them updated and ensuring delivery. Revising this zoning framework before each season using water and satellite data, supported by information from Kissan Card, is a step forward and costs way less than repeating the same old cropping pattern.
The writer is senior research analyst at The Urban Sector Planning and Management Services Unit (The Urban Unit), Lahore.
Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, August 31st, 2026
