Fish, not farm
The reasons why farming is on the decline are primarily economic
By Aoun Sahi
Agriculture is the mainstay of Pakistan's economy. Almost 70 per cent of Pakistan's total population is directly or indirectly related to agriculture sector but its share in total output (GDP) is nearly 22 per cent. Punjab's share in agriculture sector of the country is more than 70 per cent.

It is good to every once in a while take a glance at the grassroots. The rural side to us, it is corroborated in this special report here, is changing fast. Where there would be traditional crops like cotton, paddy and wheat, are emerging new options. Poultry and fish pays and quite often as we discuss factors that are influencing the crop patterns in the country, these new choices that the farmer is making are ignored. The special report highlights this as well as some other reasons that will help determine the future of agriculture in Pakistan.

Some reasons behind the changing agriculture mosaic are not time specific like the decrease in per farmer piece of land due to the law of inheritance. The rise in yield may be welcome but the law of inheritance itself shrinks agricultural land in so small pieces that a change of profession is quite often a farmer's last resort. But much before that, it is the availability of resources, water being top of the list, that determines who is sowing what where.

Industry is taking up vast tracts of land in the country, which is a good thing, officialy, and too deep an invasion of the country's most productive sector, according to experts. The balance has been missing from many of our endeavours like the mushrooming of sugar mills all across. It is a big enough lesson for the officials and public to refrain from launching similar adventures in future. The progress lies as much in consolidating the conventional crops as in introducing new ideas for earning in a rural setting. The old cannot be compromised by the desire for the new. Surely not in this case.

Every second that passes increases the number of people dependent on land for food. One rice field in Asia feeds 27 people now, in 50 years from now the number of people needed to be fed by one rice field will climb up to 43, according to a report in The Economist (December 9th-15th).

Another report carried by the same paper quotes Norman Bourlag, the father of the 'green revolution' and the winner of Nobel peace prize, as advocating even more intensive farming to cope with this rapidly rising demand. This intensive farming involves increased use of 'green revolution' techniques like greater use of fertilizers, pesticides, better seeds and enhanced irrigation. It was because of these techniques, Bourlag points out, "global cereal production tripled between 1950 and 2000, but the amount of land used increased by only 10 per cent."

In Pakistan's case this may not work. The area under cultivation is hardly expanding and so too the yield per hectare. The only thing that is increasing for sure is population and the demands it puts on finite land are not just restricted to an increased production of food. The needs for housing, urbanisation and industrialisation are fast eating into the land which until now was being used for agriculture.

The availability of land is not the only problem confronting agriculture in Pakistan. According to a policy research working paper written by Rashid Faruqee for the World Bank in January 1995, "there are two sets of constraints facing Pakistan's agriculture -- resource constraints and policy distortions." The resources that this paper mentions are land and water and policy interventions concern the supply of inputs like fertilizers, the system of determining the prices of agricultural commodities, availability of credit to farmers and the government extension services meant for introducing latest technologies and scientific know how at the farm level.

To understand where the focus for finding the reasons for the imminent failure of agriculture in Pakistan should lie, it does help to understand how the sector fared before, during and after the 'green revolution' which unfolded roughly between 1965 and 1975. Researchers have identified four different phases in the development of agriculture from its pre-green revolution days to the present: The pre-green revolution phase when growth is driven by expansion in cultivated and irrigated area; the green revolution phase when growth is driven by highly yielding varieties with increased use of inputs; the first post-green revolution phase when growth is driven by intensification of input use, especially chemical fertilizers and irrigation water which in turn helps multiple cropping; and the second post-green revolution phase when benefits from input use start to level out and increases in input efficiency and release of new seed varieties become the sources of growth.

Rashid Faruqee puts Pakistan in this latest phase where growth in agriculture needs to come from a more efficient use of inputs rather than on their increased quantity. The measure to calculate this growth, yield per acre, suggests that in Pakistan it is either increasing very slowly or is stagnating. Not only that, Pakistan is lagging behind its regional and international competitors in terms of both absolute growth in the agriculture sector as well as on-farm productivity growth. "Yields have grown strongly only for cotton. Yields have grown slightly in the case of wheat and for remaining crops yields have remained more or less stagnant," writes Rashid Faruqee. "Since the mid 1970s, (in Pakistan) agriculture growth has been accompanied by little or no productivity growth."

He then compares these figures with those from countries like Egypt and India. "...in the past decade, wheat yields have grown at 1.6 per cent per annum, compared to 2.9 per cent in the Indian Punjab and 2.7 for all developing countries," his paper reads.

In terms of absolute growth, the country has hardly fared better. "Indonesia's aggregate growth is about half a percentage point higher than Pakistan" but considering that East Asian countries have maintained much lower population growth rate than Pakistan, this small difference means a lot. Even where the growth in agriculture was less than that in Pakistan -- in India and Egypt -- the lesser population growth rate meant that per capita increase in agriculture was much better than in Pakistan.

The reasons are obvious: Land and water resources are degrading and institutional mechanisms to spur growth are either failing to deliver or being too inadequate to be useful. "The land available for cropping is being reduced due to waterlogging and salinity... Soil erosion is a serious problem," notes Faruqee. Add to it the encroaching industrialisation and urbanisation and it will be instantly clear why the "total cultivable area has been more or less constant for quite some time." He also points out that irrigated area has hardly expanded at all since the early 1980s.

Noting an inverse relationship between the farm size and the rate of increase in per hectare yield, Faruqee says some of the largest farms represent absentee landlords and underused lands and therefore give rise to a loss of efficiency. These large farms (comprising more than 60 hectares), though they account for only 0.3 per cent of all farms in the country, occupy more than 10 per cent of farm area.

On the other end of this extreme, there lie very small farms. "Over one-quarter of farms are below 1 hectare in size...Nearly half of all farms are below 5 hectares in size but occupy just 12 per cent of total land...These farms are unlikely to be a source of productivity growth," according to Faruqee.

As far as water resources are concerned, Faruqee's diagnosis is as straightforward as it is alarming: "Due to age, overuse and poor maintenance, the canal system is extremely inefficient. Average delivery efficiency is 35-40 per cent from the canal head to root zone, with most losses in water course."

These problems have been compounded by the government's financial constraints to maintain and operate the canal system. "In the last four years (starting with 1990), the shortfall between required and actual operation and maintenance expenditure has averaged 25 per cent," says Faruqee. "The system is also characterized by inequitable distribution. Illegal pumping from canals is widespread and in practice local water resources are often controlled by a small number of politically powerful farmers."

In the absence of any improvement in the canal system, "groundwater use has risen considerably...growing at 6 per cent per year." In some areas, like Balochistan, excessive extraction of groundwater is already creating adverse environmental consequences. Another issue related to groundwater use is the rising price of extracting water. Both electricity tariffs and diesel prices have virtually hit the ceiling, making groundwater use uneconomical for a large number of farmers across the country.

The institutional capacity to deal with these problems is hardly encouraging. In fact, in some cases it is proving to be counterproductive. For instance, "fertilizer policy is imposing large hidden costs on farmers, including search costs for scarce supplies, uncertainty about availability leading to panic buying and depressed yields through lack of availability at the required time," writes Faruqee. Similarly, the "use of improved seed has been held back by problems of availability, accessibility and quality. On-farm research has shown that the use of old varieties of seed could be depressing yields by 15 per cent," he adds.

Since the writing of this paper, a lot many measures have been taken to reform the fertilizer and seed markets but sadly the results have been average at best. Another area -- which has drawn a lot of attention of late and is increasingly failing to address the problems it was created for -- is agriculture extension services. Faruqee explains why it is necessary to have a performing extension service to enhance productivity growth:

"Most studies indicate that the variables that consistently explain farmer inefficiency are farmers' knowledge and skills. As emphasis shifts from input intensification to input efficiency, improvements in the information and the skills play a bigger role in increasing productivity...Extension thus has a central role in improving productivity growth" because it is supposed to inform the farmers of latest farming practices. This is especially true for small farmers who "may find it expensive to acquire knowledge and so public extension has a role in equalising access to new methods."

A study carried out by Andrew P Davidson, Munir Ahmed and Tanvir Ali for Agriculture Research and Extension Network finds out that "education and farm size are the most important variables in assessing what influences satisfaction with extension contact." It means that the more literate and affluent a farmer, more likely he is to get in touch with extension staff, "underscoring the bias of extension providers towards better-educated and resource-rich farmers. In a country where "small and medium farmers comprise approximately 93 per cent of the farming community" and where literacy rates, especially among the farming communities, remain woefully low, the study is nothing but an indictment of the extension services.

Even if extension somehow starts delivering, it cannot substitute for investment in the agriculture sector which during the recent past has been receiving an increasingly lesser allocation in the federal as well as provincial budgets. "In 1988, the National Commission on Agriculture recommended that the share of agriculture in budget (should not be) less than 1.5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It could not be implemented," reads an article posted on an agriculture-only website www.pakissan.com.

Another indicator of the money being invested in the agriculture sector is the credit available to farmers through various banking channels. In 2002-2003 it stood at a miserly Rs 57 billion. Though it was raised to Rs 80 billion in 2004-05 and to Rs 130 billion in 2005-06, it still caters to a very small portion of the credit needs of the farm sector. A sector of economy which accounts for 25 per cent of GDP and which still employs 44 per cent of all labour force available in the country, agriculture should at least get what it is worth. Some experts, therefore, recommend that the banking sector must provide credit to the extent of Rs 500 billion to the agriculture sector -- that is 25 per cent of all the credit allocation for all the sectors. Today, the share of agriculture in the formal loan market stands at a pathetic 5 per cent. No wonder, vast majorities of farmers across Pakistan are struggling to get out of the economic stranglehold of informal moneylenders.

If nothing is done to reverse all these negative trends, every passing second will keep increasing the number of people dependent on agriculture and without recourse to succour. Farmland in Pakistan may fail to take this burden before it is able to raise its productivity.

Fish, not farm

Agriculture is the mainstay of Pakistan's economy. Almost 70 per cent of Pakistan's total population is directly or indirectly related to agriculture sector but its share in total output (GDP) is nearly 22 per cent. Punjab's share in agriculture sector of the country is more than 70 per cent.

But now for many of the farmers in Punjab cultivating prime crops on their land is not the first choice. Ibrahim Mughal, Chairman Agri Forum Pakistan thinks the reasons more or less are viability and economics of agriculture. "A relatively large portion of productive land is being used for fish farming, poultry farming, animal farms, factories and housing colonies rather than cultivation of prime crops" he tells TNS. One of the main reasons for this according to him is decreasing number of acres per farmer and increasing prices of agricultural inputs. The data available to Ibrahim shows that in Punjab 18 per cent farmers own less than 1.25 acres of land, 16 per cent own 1.25 to 2.5 acres of land while 22 per cent farmers own 2.5 to 5 acres of total cultivated land.

"When one talks about a farmer, it means a family comprising four to ten members that is why for most of these farmers agriculture is not a feasible option because of heavy cost of input," he says.

So what they do, he says, is that they keep some buffalos or cows to sell milk and use most of their land for growing fodder. Some keep goats and sheep or make a poultry farm to earn more. Many of them, especially those whose land is close to cities and villages sell it to a factory owner or real estate developer.

The agriculture statistics of government of Pakistan show cultivated area in the country is decreasing. Data shows that in 1998, 56.93 million acres of land were under cultivation, which has now decreased to 55.62 million acres.

"In the last three years 0.475 million acres of productive agricultural land in Punjab alone has been converted into housing colonies, industrial estates, fish farms and poultry farms," Ibrahim tells TNS. "Although all these practices are making lives of farmers easy, in the long run these are harmful for agriculture. All vegetables and pulses are very dear these days because the farmers who used to grow them are turning towards new practices," he adds.

According to livestock department Multan's sheep and goat breeding centre in charge Mian Safdar, South Punjab's four districts, Bahawalpur, Multan, DG Khan, and Sargodha, are traditionally known for sheep and goat farms; a large part of land in these districts is used for grazing cattle. "Most of this land is not suitable for agriculture because of unavailability of water, and for farmers keeping livestock is the best option," he tells TNS.

But he says the trend of breeding animals like sheep and goats is surprisingly on the rise in central Punjab. This is one of the reasons that livestock sector registered 8 per cent growth during 2004-05. He says contribution of Punjab in the total national production of four major livestock products: milk, beef, mutton and chicken is 66 per cent, 46 per cent, 33 per cent and 75 per cent, respectively. Whereas Punjab's share in the total livestock of Pakistan is 46 per cent of cattle, 67 per cent of buffalo, 26 per cent sheep, 37 per cent goat and 75 per cent poultry.

Safdar says that according to 2003-04 data, the area under fodder production is about 3.35 million hectares out of a total cropped area of 21.85 million hectares in the country. "The area under fodder cultivation in Punjab is 2.03 million hectares, which makes almost 14 per cent of the total cultivated area of the province."

Thousands of farmers in Punjab who once used to keep buffaloes, cows, sheep, goats and hens for domestic use are now forced to keep them for commercial reasons. "Forty years back, my father owned more than 50 acres of land; and farming was the family business," says Muhammad Ali, a 75 year old resident of Adamke, a village in Sialkot district. But he says that now conditions have completely changed. "We were six brothers and each of us got 9 acres of land. I have five sons, and each one of them will get just 1.75 acres. They cannot survive by doing farming, that is why now three of them have sold their land while the others are keeping buffaloes and cows and sell milk for a living. The land that they have is used for growing fodder for their cattle," he tells TNS. According to him same is the case with almost all his brothers and most farmers in his village.

Agriculture Minister Punjab, Arshad Lodhi, knows the situation very well but he thinks that government cannot force people to do farming. "It is right that productive land in Punjab is being used for other purposes, like building housing colonies, or factories, or for fish farming," he says. Furthermore, "livestock is a part of agriculture and it contributes 50 per cent to the value addition in the agriculture sector, and almost 11 per cent to Pakistan's GDP, which is higher than the contribution made by the crop sector (47.4 percent in agriculture, and 10.3 percent in GDP)," he says.

According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2005-06 despite decades of neglect, Pakistan is the fifth largest milk producer in the world. The total value of milk produced is higher than the value of two major crops, that is, wheat and cotton.

Ibrahim Mughal says that in Pakistan we get four litres of milk per animal, while the ratio in India is 8 to 10 litres, and in the US it is 20 litres per animal.

The Economic Survey of Pakistan 2005-06 also shows that population of livestock is on the rise. Figures quoted state that in 2001-02 total population of buffaloes was 22.8 million, which in 2005-06 reached 28.4 million, while sheep have increased from 24.4 million to 25.5 million; and number of goats has gone up from 50.9 million to 61.9 million. The increased population of livestock naturally means that more land is being used for their fodder and shelter.

Livestock is not the only sector using up agricultural land of the province, making fish farms is another very popular practice among farmers in Punjab. According to Syed Nadeem, chairman Punjab Fish Farmers Association, at present there are almost 60,000 fish farms in the province. "In Gujranwala district alone more than 30,000 acres of agricultural land is bing used for fish farming, because it is a profitable business," he says. According to him, in almost one lakh acres of agricultural land in Punjab is being used for fish farms.