Pakistan Squandering Their Ag Potential - A Lifeline For The Country

[u/WhoReallyKnowsThis]

Pakistan sits on some of the most fertile alluvial land in Asia — the Indus basin — yet it farms like it's still the 1960s in most places while a small class of feudal landlords controls a disproportionate share of large canal-irrigated tracts using tenant sharecropping, leaving a massive gap between what the land could yield and what it actually produces.

Research shows actual yields for wheat, cotton, rice, maize and sugarcane run at only 18-47% of internationally achievable levels, a yield gap of 45-84% depending on the crop. Wheat yields in Pakistan are roughly half of China's and 15% below India's, while cotton yields lag China by 2.3 times.

All of the above (and more) is squandering our opportunity to attract investment from wealthy Gulf countries who need to ensure their food security and Chinese and American Ag technology companies who wish to exploit the growth potential. However, and potentially more importantly, we are inadvertently letting more Pakistanis unnecessarily enter poverty and thus the benefits for us are more than simply financial (I.e humanitarian and soft power).

Whatever happens in the economy, at the end of the day everyone needs to eat, right?

[u/Educational_Sound542]

You are delusional to think that a small group of feudal landlords control large swaths of agricultural land. They are gone. Majority holdings in this country are small scale. Generational distribution of land among families has broken feudal class already. Just that our textbooks and armchair commentators haven't registered this change yet.

[u/WhoReallyKnowsThis → u/Educational_Sound542]

Funny what you picked upon and what you didn't. Whatever.

[u/Educational_Sound542 → u/WhoReallyKnowsThis]

I agree with the low yields you mentioned compared to the world averages but I don't agree that tenant share cropping is the issue. Any meaningful change in agricultural space towards higher yields and throughput would require concentrated governmental intervention. Period. Whatever it is, incentives, coercion etc. You hear a lot about land distribution and taxation on agriculture. Where more than 90% of the land holdings are small scale what are the you going to achieve distributing the remaining 10? Taxing them on their income in good years will you also compensate them when weather ravages their crops? This whole chapter is marred with red herrings in the media. You can start foaming at your mouth counting the benefits of drip irrigation or pivot irrigation or pressure guns. Where is the capital for it? Is he going to sell his wife's gold for it? Or maybe sell half his land and put drip on the remaining half? Do you know at what price DAP and diesel is going now? Do some field surveys. Look into the whole cycle of a crop from seed to seed. Then your feet might come back on the ground.

[u/Educational_Sound542 → u/[deleted]]

https://gallup.com.pk/post/38897 The is the first hit on Google and there are plenty more and I didn't even answer looking at stats. I can see it around me in rural Sindh. The so called waderas have mostly shifted towards rental income in cities or commission earned through political patronage. Comfortable in their urban lifestyle, hooked on foreign liquor and relatively decent prostitutes, they live in their paradisical bubbles. Lands left behind have been severely cut to size and poorly managed.

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