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Govt's move to
introduce corporate farming criticised
ISLAMABAD: The government's decision to introduce corporate
agriculture farming has drawn sharp criticism from the
Sustainable Agriculture Action Group (SAAG), saying it will
result in the exploitation and slavery of the 93 per cent
small and illiterate farmers all over the country.
According to a press release issued from the SAAG secretariat
by Roshan Malik, the decision taken by the federal cabinet on
Wednesday about the introduction of Corporate Agriculture
Farming in the country was not only a shock to our small
farmers but also for civil society organisations.
According to terms of CAF, there will be no upper land ceiling
and no labour laws for the people working on the big farms. No
duty will be charged on the agricultural equipment imported by
the agricultural firms. Roshan Malik has expressed the fears
that the new policy will give an opportunity to transnational
corporations (TNCs) and feudal lords to jump into and extract
as much profit as they can while denying right to food or food
security.
The SAAG said in the past, there had been two attempts at land
reforms in order to curtail the power of feudal lords and big
landholders. But this government has reverted previous land
reforms efforts, it said. Roshan Malik said 93 per cent of the
agricultural community comprises small farmers, who are
already in a miserable condition because of the policies of
the government which are promoting corporate farming in the
perspective of multilateral trading system in the arena of WTO.
The decision has hammered the final nail in the coffin of
small farmers, the press release said.
Roshan Malik pointed out that the poor small farmers will be
unable to compete with the giant TNCs, which want to capture
our resources. The subsistence farmers will have to sell their
lands either on cheap rates due to financial difficulties or
under the threat from the influentials or be forced to
emigrate to cities, he said. In addition to it, it will
enhance urbanisation which is already a big challenge for our
town planners, he said. This will also increase unemployment
in the society or get very menial jobs without labour laws, he
said.
Aftab Alam Khan of Actionaid Pakistan (SAAG Partner) was of
the view that our government policy is concentrated towards
the production of food only and it was ignoring even the
distribution of food which is of primary importance. He said
we have witnessed Pakistan is surplus in wheat for the last
three years. But the people in the drought-hit area are dying
of hunger, he said. "Even, we were unable to export the wheat
as we had set our target."
He also said the small farmers were not given the support
prices of their yield as announced by the government. Aasim of
SDPI (SAAG Partner) was of the view that police have besieged
the tenants in some areas of the country in order to vacate
the land from the poor which shows government's negation to
the previous commitments to give the state land to the poor
tenants and Haris.
Dr Abid Suleri condemned the CAF and criticised the government
for backing out from its commitments that it made at various
international forums such as World Food Summit 2002 to reduce
the hunger by the year 2015. He said that CAF would not only
threaten the food security of many but also affect the
biological diversity of the region leading us to an era of
monocropping and cultivation of cash crops instead of food
security crops.
Courtesy The News (By Rauf Klasra)
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Pakissan.com;
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