THE farmers play a vital role in meeting the food needs of the country and also contribute in foreign exchange earnings. Most of them are self-employed, their work hazardous and the market unpredictable. Their task includes caring for the livestock, operating machinery, maintaining equipment and keeping the record.

Crop farms grow grains, cotton, fibres, fruit and vegetables. The crop farmer plants, tills, fertilize, sprays, harvests, packs and stores the produce. While the livestock farmer plans, feeds and cares for animals, and the horticulture produces ornamental plants and nursery products. The aqua-cultural farmers raise fish and shellfish.

Employment in farming is predicted to decline because of the increasing productivity and the combining of smaller farms. Aquaculture has the most new job opportunities because of over-fishing and a high demand for seafood.

Smaller ones will survive by establishing market niches such as organic farming with direct customer contact. Farming today combines formal education and work experience.

Pakistani universities usually have a school of agriculture where bachelor’s degrees are conferred upon. Few farmers offer apprenticeship programmes for job training. Farm managers usually posses a bachelor’s degree with experience of many years.

Pakistan boasts of 197 million acres of land with only 52.21 million acres for cultivation. Besides, 9.04 million acres is forest. According to the Pakistan Land Commission’s 1972 report, 600 feudal families own 30 million acres while another 7.1 million acres under the control of 3000 landlords.

There are about four million farmers working under landlords with a share 30 per cent in total production. As the prices of fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, agricultural machinery have risen by up to 200 per cent in the last 40 years and these farmer-tenants suffer because their landlords place the burden of loss on their shoulders. Most of these agricultural workers live below the poverty line.

In lower Sindh, more than one million agricultural labourers are working on casual basis. The loans taken from the landlords accumulate due to high interest rates which after few generations becomes impossible to be repaid. Hence they and their families become bonded labours languishing in private jails of their landlords.

The per capita income of the millions of agricultural workers is less than half a dollar. These workers are deprived of basic facilities like health, food, clothes, education, water and homes, etc. Their women are tortured by the landlords and their thugs.

A farmer-oriented approach is a key to sustainability. A significant number of the rural population in developing countries depends on small-scale, subsistence-oriented agriculture based on family labour.

However, they have limited access to resources, technology, alternative livelihood and means of production. As a result, they over exploit natural resources, including marginal lands.

The key to successful implementation of such programmes lies in the motivation and attitude of individual farmers and the government policies to provide incentives to farmers to manage their natural resources efficiently and in a sustainable way.

Farmers, particularly women, face a high degree of economic, legal and institutional uncertainties when investing in their land and other resources.

The following objectives are proposed:

* To encourage a decentralized decision-making process through the creation and strengthening of local and village organizations that would delegate power and responsibility to primary users of natural resources;

* To support and enhance the legal capacity of women and vulnerable groups with regard to access, use and tenure of land;

* To promote and encourage sustainable farming practices and technologies;

* To introduce or strengthen policies that would encourage self-sufficiency in low-input and low-energy technologies, including indigenous practices, and pricing mechanisms that internalize environmental costs;

* To develop a policy framework that provides incentives and motivation among farmers for sustainable and efficient farming practices;

* To enhance the participation of farmers, men and women, in the design and implementation of policies directed towards these ends through their representative organizations, * Ensure the implementation of the programmes on sustainable livelihoods, agriculture and rural development, managing fragile ecosystems, water use in agriculture, and integrated management of natural resources;

* Promote pricing mechanisms, trade policies, fiscal incentives and other policy instruments that positively affect individual farmer’s decisions about an efficient and sustainable use of natural resources, and take full account of the impact of these decisions on household food security, farm incomes, employment and the environment;

* Involve farmers and their representative organizations in the formulation of policy;

* Protect, recognize and formalize women’s access to tenure and use of land, as well as rights to land, access to credit, technology, inputs and training;

* Support the formation of farmers’ organizations by providing adequate legal and social conditions.

Support for farmers’ organizations could be arranged as follows:

* National and international research centres should cooperate with farmers’ organizations in developing location-specific environment-friendly farming techniques;

* National governments, multilateral and bilateral development agencies and non-governmental organizations should collaborate with farmers’ organizations in formulating agricultural development project to specific agro-ecological zones.

* The governments and farmers’ organizations should establish networks for the exchange of experiences with regard to farming that help to conserve land, water and forest resources, minimize the use of chemicals and reduce or reutilize farm wastes;

* Develop pilot projects and extension services that would seek to build on the needs and knowledge base of women farmers;

* International and regional cooperation-FAO, IFAD, WFP, the World Bank, the regional development banks and other international organizations involved in rural development should involve farmers and their representatives in their deliberations, as appropriate.

Farmers’ first priority is to stay in business and to keep the farm running. They cannot risk going bankrupt. Thus, we can expect to react defensively to demand for radical changes in their established modes of production.

It should also be noted that farmers are not a homogenous group of people. Depending on production-orientation, geographical location, and the way farm production is organized etc., the farmer will respond differently on incentives and demands on environmental and quality improvements.

Thus, we have to understand farmers’ behaviour and include the meaning farmers’ themselves attach to farming and their own description of how to organize the complex activity.

Farmers are at core in the process of changing agriculture towards sustainability. They are the ones who are responsible for converting the growing awareness and knowledge into everyday practices. By the same token they will probably experience great changes in their everyday life, work and business objectives.

The challenges are many, and it is obvious that the way forward is through a participatory and truly democratic approach. Through inclusive processes farmers’ local knowledge and site specific experience can be taken into account.

As a response to all these notions social learning, collaboration, and local decision making has been advocated as approaches to be used to identify incentives for constrains against and hindrances to farmers applying sustainable modes of production.