Recent attempts to pave the way for the one-canal project and introduce corporate farming have been met with fierce opposition. Both landowners and cultivators (kashtkar) stand to be affected by the advent of corporate farming. Corporate farming, at its very core, is the ideology that food is merely a commodity that can be maximised and monetised for economic gain. Those who govern the country, with their agenda of expanding corporate farming in Pakistan, will only stand to benefit from it.
The government is influenced by Middle Eastern and Western nations, which view countries like Pakistan as a potential supplier of the future. Pakistan aims to become a ‘food grower of the future’ for the Gulf and beyond, and select groups stand to benefit financially. The current impetus for corporate farming stems from a desire to create a market and exploit economic opportunity. The launch of the Green Pakistan Initiative in March this year had already declared, for starters, that the Green Corporate Initiative (GCI), an army-owned private company, has been tasked with converting decapitated land mass into cultivable farmland. Many other favourable companies will join the bandwagon over time.
Given our nation’s track record, there are many reasons and suspicions to suggest that corporate farming in Pakistan will not benefit the small farmer and will be detrimental to most landowners and cultivators. Vital to consider is the power and influence corporations would wield over demand, supply, and pricing. If agricultural produce commands better prices upon export to international markets and becomes more profitable, what would you expect these corporations and their owners to do?
There is enough empirical evidence from other countries to argue that corporate farming is detrimental to small-scale farmers because corporate farms operate on large scales and dominate the market due to vertical integration, where they control feed, processing, and distribution chains, driving down prices and leaving farmers unable to compete. Their monopoly over access to resources and technology, and ability to get subsidies and favourable treatment via government policies, also puts small landowners at a disadvantage, leading to rural depopulation. Corporate farming agendas can also have significant societal and geographical impacts, such as the redistribution of resources like water and the reorganisation of irrigated waterways.
Evidence also suggests that agriculture and livestock intensification resulting from corporate farming leads to a loss of farming jobs. This is clearly demonstrated in the UK between 1961 and 2019, where agricultural employment fell by 68%, in the US where it fell by 49% in the same period, and in Brazil by 19% (ILO & World Bank figures). Such stories of agricultural intensification should serve as a warning to countries like Pakistan, which are keen on corporate farming.
Closer to home, our neighbouring country with a similar agricultural anthropology has demonstrated that farmers have pushed back on engaging with big traders and agribusinesses because it creates an uneven playing field where giant corporations dictate the terms of engagement. Promoting large-scale corporate farming contributes to consolidating farming jobs into fewer hands of ownership. It undermines the viability of small-scale farming and silences the small-scale farmer. In the mantra of Earl Butz, the American agriculture secretary in the 1970s, this implies: “get big or get out”.
The common people seem to realise this threat and made a firm stand against the Green Pakistan Initiative, which was ambitiously launched earlier this year
As a country, we have a poor track record of being able to regulate commodity-based corporations that are used to getting their way. Look at the workings of the sugar industry and the pharmaceutical industry, and you can quickly establish that the state is unable to regulate or control them. The state often ends up being complicit since lawmakers themselves have vested interests in these corporate entities. The consequence is how these corporations and selective groups of people can control and redistribute resources and manipulate markets.
What is to say that agriculture corporations and the corporate farming sector will be any different from the sectors we already see as compromised and corrupted? It will be no surprise that, when the corporate farming sector establishes itself in Pakistan, its makeup will comprise mega industrialised farms owned by powerful corporations on one hand, and on the other hand, large and very large farms that are exclusively family-run. We see this makeup already across sectors in Pakistan and can observe how the government protects the interests of these corporations and selective business families.
The common people seem to realise this threat and made a firm stand against the Green Pakistan Initiative, which was ambitiously launched earlier this year. The unity and resistance against the initiative that was observed was unlike any movement seen in modern times. The government, on this occasion, was given a rare reality check about the power that the masses can wield. It has left the governing party in the province between a rock and a hard place for the future.
Because it is only a matter of time before those in Rawalpindi demand that the government return to the agenda and execute plans. But then there are the landowners, the cultivators, the people — all vote givers — who will expect the government to defend their interests, or else.
Even assuming that our rulers are well-intentioned and want the nation to make progress via agriculture, corporate farming does not offer the mechanism by which to economically uplift the very people in the agricultural trade. Neither does success in corporate farming translate to fair distribution of wealth. It will be corporations and their owners who stand to benefit, because people will not own part of the enterprise or have a stake in it.
The independent small-scale farmers, who form the majority of the agricultural sector in Pakistan, are in no way incentivised to perform better in a corporate farming environment, since their scope to benefit will be handicapped. Their ability to compete is weakened and diminished by corporations, which will be able to control supply chains and determine pricing (i.e., market manipulation). Even in developed countries, where there is rule of law, adequate infrastructure, and strong pricing and competition regulations, we still witness large farming corporations absorbing small local farmers or putting them out of business.
Informed estimates suggest that slightly over 90% of the total farming community in Pakistan falls under the category of small farms with less than 12.5 acres of land for cultivation. This very community, the majority, will be at threat.
For developing countries like Pakistan, aspiring to the capitalist model of agriculture is a fad. Corporations, typically bound by the ethos of greed and growth, fuel capitalism where only a selective group of people stand to benefit when corporations grow and prosper. Across developed countries in the West, modern times are showing that capitalism is failing drastically because it facilitates and benefits only the rich, while making ordinary people worse off.
Consequently, waves of populist movements arise in response to the inequality and unfair distribution of wealth caused by capitalism and its corporations. Farmers across Europe are protesting, parking their tractors outside parliaments and blocking capitals because they cannot compete against large farming corporations and they begrudge government policies favouring these corporations. If there is a lesson to learn from these countries, it is that corporate farming leads to a decline in rural communities, a loss of agricultural diversity, and a loss of livelihoods for small and mid-sized farmers.
Societal and economic growth must come via the mechanism of cooperative farming, even if it means going against the tide
Cooperative farming, on the other hand, is a system where farmers voluntarily join together to form organisations (cooperatives) with the intention of mutual benefit under the core idea of collective action. It is a way of organising whereby joint purchasing of inputs occurs, there is collective marketing of produce to get better and stable prices, sharing of equipment and labour, providing financial services to members of the cooperative, and so on. Success in cooperative farming is measured by its contribution to the incomes of farmers who are part of cooperatives.
The Cooperative Societies Amendment Act of 2020 provides the legal framework for the establishment of cooperative entities and outlines the rules and procedures for the registration, administration, and functioning of cooperative societies, emphasising democratic decision-making and equitable distribution of benefits. Over the last 15 years, the government has also accepted recommendations of the national commission for food and agriculture regarding the need to introduce cooperative farming in Pakistan.
There is plenty of evidence across countries that cooperative models in agriculture can be very successful for farmers and the economy. In Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, cooperatives in agriculture have been flourishing since the late 19th century and offer many examples of successful farmer collaboration and strong markets at home and abroad. In China, cooperatives can be traced back to the 1950s, and the 1970s saw the introduction of the Household Responsibility System, which allowed farmers to lease land from the state and manage their farms independently, paving the way for the formation of new cooperatives focusing on providing technical support, access to markets, and financial services.
In Indonesia, the Indonesian Cooperative Council (DEKOPIN) has been instrumental in advocating for cooperative development and supporting the growth of agricultural cooperatives. In the Philippines, cooperatives have empowered rural communities, improved agricultural productivity, and demonstrated remarkable resilience and adaptability. The Cooperative Development Authority (CDA), established in 1990, has played a vital role in promoting cooperative development and providing support to cooperatives across the Philippines.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country’s economic recovery following the genocide of the 1990s has seen agricultural cooperatives contribute to alleviating rural poverty by improving working conditions for farmers and enhancing market access, demonstrating that collective action among farmers can be an effective rural development intervention.
In Pakistan, empirical research has observed that cooperative (mutual) farming was beneficial and more economical than individual farming, revealing that the per-acre use of inputs and outputs was significantly higher in the case of cooperative farmers as compared to non-cooperative farmers. However, it is established that these cooperatives could not sustain themselves in the long run and their stability was affected by factors such as lack of education and member conflict.
The International Institute of Sustainable Development in 2024 provides guidelines and offers interventions for promoting the development of agricultural cooperatives in the Global South. These primarily focus on building a supportive regulatory, institutional, and infrastructural environment, and implementing targeted initiatives for professionalising and sustaining cooperative operations. Developing an ecosystem for agricultural cooperatives can help independent small-scale farmers access training and inputs, boost productivity, and improve access to markets.
This may seem a harder and less conventional means of achieving economic prosperity, but it is one that offers more sustainability and hope for shared distribution of wealth. The government must provide opportunities and platforms for growth to cooperatives in the form of policies, subsidies, and infrastructure that can boost their growth. It must also ensure access to affordable finance for cooperatives to grow and become sustainable.
Cooperative farming means landowners and cultivators reimagine the playing field and make efforts to lobby the system through collective bargaining. It is about change from within and changing your own ecology. This will mean compromising around structures and norms of ownership, overcoming ethnic and class barriers, and pooling interests to form cooperatives as legal entities for the future that can function.
This also implies challenging the status quo in politics and the feudal setup that prevails. Societal and economic growth must come via the mechanism of cooperative farming, even if it means going against the tide. It will be difficult and will require effort and sacrifice. After all, true wealth is generational.