LAHORE, Pakistan: The month-long controversy surrounding the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill has still not ended in Pakistan. Its opponents fear that this bill – which provides $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over five years – will curb the sovereignty of the country, while its proponents insist the bill is meant to enable the United States to help Pakistan focus on lingering long-term development needs.
The political elements of the bill have received extensive attention from politicians and the media. Recently, though, the US Agricultural Council issued a statement from Islamabad to ensure the public that a substantial amount of funds under the bill will be invested on enhancing the agricultural productivity of Pakistan.
Americans and Pakistanis alike should pay attention to this less-considered side of the bill, as agricultural development is key to Pakistan s future.
While much of foreign aid coming into Pakistan is being routed toward fighting extremism or increasing literacy rates, the World Health Organization (WTO) has identified hunger as the gravest single threat to public health in the world. Research data from across Pakistan indicates widespread malnourishment among the rural and urban poor to be an increasing threat to the country s stability and an impediment to nationwide socio-economic growth.
To achieve food security, Pakistan s elected government needs to commit more explicitly to long- and short-term food security policies. Resulting policy actions would thus include not only allocating adequate funds to increasing agricultural yield through scientific research and technological intervention, but also ensuring the availability of safe and healthy seeds to all the country s farmers, and finding a right balance between production of cash and food crops, which is an issue the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill does not specifically address.
Although the contours of the renewed US aid commitment to Pakistan in the agriculture sector have not been determined, there is growing talk of the need for prompting use of virus-free hybrid cotton varieties and helping secure patents for neglected Pakistani agricultural property rights, which are both measures in tune with generic agricultural reforms that the WTO endorses for developing countries.
Already, in light of food being increasingly treated as a commodity in the country, the Pakistani government plans to begin leasing millions of acres of state-owned cultivable land to Arabian Gulf-based multinationals for corporate farming. This is despite the very evident probability that their financial clout and lack of local guidelines for land acquisition will enable large corporations to take over land that could otherwise go to local farmers.
With huge funds at their disposal, these corporations might also find it easier to monopolies the water supply and other resources, thus depriving neighboring farms of their rightful share. As such, the Pakistani government should not give land to Gulf companies unless they are willing to help boost local food security as well as comply with state-imposed checks and balances to prevent over-exploitation of precious resources like groundwater.
Law enforcement agencies and legislative mechanisms must be deployed, whenever required, to ensure that profiteers and food cartels do not monopolize the food supply so that food reaches the public at such high prices that the poor must go without.
The introduction of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill in Pakistan may also provide donors like USAID with additional funds to scale-up their work in Pakistan, something which could be replicated in other South Asian countries if it achieves the results it seeks. USAID is joining hands with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, dedicated to bringing innovations in health and learning to the global community, specifically by supporting the Cereals Systems Initiative for South Asia which, among other things, aims to help raise incomes and prepare farmers for climate change as they work toward sustainable crop- and resource-management practices.
This initiative aims to help more than six million small farmers in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal grow more food in the face of climate change impacts while using less energy, water and fertilizer.
The situation for the food crisis facing Pakistan can only be reversed if a major shift occurs in the way that it perceives its agricultural productivity responsibilities, by considering food first as a fundamental right of the citizens of that state, and as a profitable commodity thereafter.
Syed Mohammad Ali is a Lahore-based researcher and columnist at the Daily Times. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
