Corporate farming will exacerbate food crisis: NGO

Women buying flour on subsidized rates from Ramadan Sasta Bazaar near Committee Chowk, August 2009.

The News | Sunday, October 18, 2009

Ghulam Dastageer

PESHAWAR: “Roots for Equity” Director Dr Azra Talat Sayed has said Pakistan was facing acute water shortage and it would further deteriorate if corporate farming was promoted in the country.

“Pakistan faces acute water shortage and with corporate farming being promoted the scarce water resources will be used by foreigners for earning profits through food, which will increase hunger and deprivation among the people of Pakistan,” she told a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club in connection with World Food Day on Saturday.

She demanded of the government to stop giving agricultural land on lease to the foreign food companies, and rather these lands should be given to local growers to overcome food crisis in the country.

Dr Azra said the Corporate Farming Ordinance (CFO) was a chemical-intensive, capital-intensive production method, which would only exacerbate the shortage and apparent food crisis in the country.

She said that according the United Nations statistics, 25 percent of Pakistani population was malnourished-majority of them women and children, mostly from the rural areas.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), she added, the prices had gone up due to a number of reasons, including the tendency of investment firms such as Schroeder and GlobalAgriCap to treat food as a commodities market, and investing in food and agriculture to increase their profits.

“They are fully conscious of land and water resource shortages that are happening globally and are estimating that investment portfolios in agricultural commodities will be immensely lucrative.

“It is with this factor in mind that many investors are descending on Pakistan as vultures, wanting to lease our agricultural land, so they will be in a position to grow food for trading,” she said and added that Pakistani government had allowed foreign investors to lease agricultural land through the Corporate Farming Ordinance, 2001.

The ordinance, she added, allowed heavy tax benefits to investors, as well as allowing foreign firms to get land on lease for a 49+50 years period.

She warned that the corporate farming would also aggravate the climate change crisis, as it is dependent on the use of heavy machinery.

She demanded an immediate halt to leasing land to foreigners, saying: “Saudi Arabia is being promised more than 500,000 acres of land and rumours circulate that nearly six million acres of agricultural land has been promised for cultivation.”
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