Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262

Sustainable agriculture and eradication of rural poverty in Pakistan

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi

Abstract
Poverty is rampant in the rural areas of Pakistan, where people are in a state of deprivation with regard to incomes,
clothing, housing, healthcare, education, sanitary facilities and human rights. Agriculture generates nearly 20.9 percent of
the countrys GDP and provides employment for 43.4 percent of its workforce. Most importantly, 65.9 percent of the
population living in rural areas is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Rising population,
shrinking agricultural land, increasing demand for water resources, widespread land degradation and inadequate
infrastructure appear to be major concerns of the agriculture sector in Pakistan. An attempt has been made to examine the
population growthagriculture growthpoverty alleviation linkage. It is argued that agriculture will continue to be one of
the most important sectors of Pakistans economy for years to come. To alleviate poverty, it is suggested that Pakistan
enhance the productivity of the agriculture sector through the provision of a series of inputs including provision of easy
credit to the small farmer, availability of quality fertilizers and pesticides, tractor and harvester services, improvement in
the effectiveness of the vast irrigation system and, finally, farmer education. It is concluded that the high rate of population
growth needs to be curbed for increased agricultural productivity to have any significant effect on poverty in rural areas
of Pakistan.
Keywords: Rural poverty; Agriculture sector; Population growthagriculture growthpoverty alleviation linkage; Pakistan.

1. Introduction Pakistan will require food production for larger populations

In Pakistan the increasing rate of poverty in rural areas has
prompted debate on growth and productivity trends in the
agriculture sector. The average annual growth in agriculture
was over 3.52% from 199596 to 200405; however
over the last five years agriculture growth has witnessed
mixed trends (See Table 1). Consequently, the rate of
poverty in rural areas reached 38.65% in 200203.
Poverty is rampant in rural areas, where people are in a
state of deprivation with regard to incomes, clothing,
housing, healthcare, education, sanitary facilities and
human rights. Due to increasing population, natural
resources are gradually depleting, putting major constraints
on the efforts to eradicate poverty. The complex and
enormous problems include declining availability of
agricultural land and workforce, marginal producers with
small land holdings, decreasing per capita land availability,
conflicting demand for scarce water resources, urbanization
and youth evading traditional farming. In the coming years,
Abdul Waheed Bhutto is Assistant Professor, Dawood College of Engineering
and Technology, Karachi-Pakistan. Email: abdulwaheed27@hotmail.com
Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi is Assistant Professor, COMSAT Institute of Information
Technology, Lahore-Pakistan. Email: abazmi@ciitlahore.edu.pk
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.
from less and less land. The biggest challenge is how to
increase output from the shrinking agricultural sector,
while sustaining the productivity potential of the available
natural resources.
2. Role of agriculture in economy
Early classical theory viewed economic development as a
growth process requiring the systematic reallocation of
production factors from a primary sector characterized by
low productivity, traditional technology, and decreasing
returns to a modern industrial sector with higher
productivity and increasing profits (Adelman, 2001).
Agriculture was seen as a low-productivity, traditional
sector that only passively contributed to development by
providing food and employment.
Beginning in the 1960s, a major revision in development
thinking contended that agriculture had a central role as a
driver of growth, especially in the early stages of
industrialization. This strategy was later labeled agricultural-
demand-led-industrialization (ADLI) (Johnston and
Mellor, 1961; Schultz, 1964; Adelman, 1984). The ADLI
strategy stressed the central role of increased agricultural
254 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262

Table 1. Economic indicators of Pakistan

Facial Year Population GDP growth Agriculture Poverty Indices: Income Inequality
growth rate rate growth rate Head-count (Percentages)
(%) (%) (%)
Rural % Urban % Total % Gini co-efficient1 Lowest 20% Highest 20%

199091 5.6 5.00 25.20 26.60 26.10 0.41 6.0 47.4

199192 2.87 9.50
199293 2.40 5.30 24.60 28.30 26.80 0.37 7.0 44.8
199394 2.28 4.4 5.20 25.40 26.90 25.70 0.40 7.4 43.1
199495 2.24 5.1 6.60
199596 2.40 6.6 11.72
199697 2.34 1.7 0.12 33.1 22.6 29.8 0.41 7.3 49.3
199798 2.36 3.5 4.52
199899 2.23 4.2 1.95 34.7 20.9 30.6 0.40 6.9 46.8
199900 2.20 3.9 6.09
200001 2.11 1.8 2.20 39.0 22.7 32.1
200102 2.13 3.1 0.10
200203 2.20 4.7 4.10 38.65 22.39 31.80
200304 2.40 7.5 2.30
200405 2.26 8.6 6.70

Sources: GOP (2005a), (2001a), (2001b).

productivity in achieving industrialization through expanding
demand for goods produced by domestic industry. Two key
characteristics of agriculture during the early stages of
development justified its place in early development
thinking. First, agriculture produces goods that directly
satisfy basic human needs. Second, agricultural production
combines human effort with natural resources, such as land
and agro-ecological assets. Since natural resources were
assumed to be freely available, early development theorists
believed that agriculture could grow independently of other
economic activities. It was also recognized that traditional
agriculture could be transformed rapidly into a modern
sector through the adoption of science-based technology,
thereby making a large contribution to overall growth.
Beyond its direct contribution to growth, a number of
features specific to the sector enhance its contribution to
pro-poor growth, including the concentration of the poor
in the sector, the large size of its growth linkages to other
sectors, and the positive externalities from assuring food
security and reducing food prices (Byerlee et al., 2005).
The unprecedented fall in global poverty in Asia in the last
three decades reflects a large contribution from successful
agricultural transformation (Datt and Ravallion, 1998a,
1998b; Ravallion and Chen, 2004).
1
The Gini coefficient is a measure of statistical dispersion most
prominently used as a measure of inequality of income distribution or
inequality of wealth distribution. It is defined as a ratio with values
between 0 and 1: the numerator is the area between the Lorenz curve of
the distribution and the uniform distribution line; the denominator is the
area under the uniform distribution line. Thus, a low Gini coefficient
indicates more equal income or wealth distribution, while a high Gini
coefficient indicates more unequal distribution.
Agriculture accounts for nearly 20.9% of Pakistans
national income (GDP), employs 43.4% of the countrys
workforce and accounts for nearly 9% of the countrys
export earnings (GOP, 2007). Moreover, this sector provides
raw material to domestic agro-based industries, such as
sugar, ghee, leather, and textiles. Most importantly, 65.9%
of the countrys population living in rural areas is directly
or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood
(GOP, 2006). Given the high percentage of people in
Pakistan who depend on agriculture for their livelihood,
little progress can be made on poverty reduction if this
sector languishes with a slow rate of growth. In addition to
the direct impact of agriculture growth on poverty
reduction, there is also a much larger indirect effect
through the linkages between agriculture and non-farm
growth in rural areas.
3. Linkage of agricultural productivity growth and
rural non-farm growth
Agricultural productivity growth stimulates rural non-farm
growth, especially where infrastructure and the investment
climate are already in place (Barnes and Binswanger, 1986;
Hazell and Haggblade, 1991). The linkage has proven most
powerful when agricultural growth is driven by broad-
based productivity increases in a rural economy dominated
by small farms, as in much of Asia (Mellor, 1976). Small-
to medium-sized farm households typically have more
favorable expenditure patterns for promoting growth of the
local non-farm economy, including rural towns, since they
spend higher shares of income on agricultural goods and
services, which are generally more labour intensive
(Mellor, 1976; King and Byerlee, 1978; Hazell and Roell,
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262
1983). The increased demand for non-farm goods leads to
a much larger increase in employment, which is a key
vehicle for poverty reduction (Mellor, 2001).
In Pakistan, non-farm growth is closely linked with
agricultural growth since peasant farmers spend a large
portion of their incremental income on locally produced,
non-agricultural goods, including consumer items, textiles
and electronic goods and ornaments, thus generating
employment and incomes in the adjoining areas. Construction
activities are also accelerated with agricultural growth. In
addition, there appears to be a higher incidence of
vulnerability of falling into and remaining in poverty
among households which are dependent solely on
agriculture. Rural areas that are well connected with the
urban areas seem to be more prosperous, in part because
the lack of employment opportunities in rural areas results
either in labour reallocation or migration. In both cases,
human capital plays a positive and significant role and the
poorest of the poor possess neither the human capital nor
the resources to migrate. This vulnerable group needs
special attention.
4. Poverty
Poverty can be recognized by the deprivation of economic,
cultural and social rights. Poverty means hunger, lack of
access to medical facilities, and poor access to basic
services such as electricity and water supply (World Bank,
2001). It means being unable to send children to school and
often needing them to work instead. A common method
used to measure poverty is based on incomes or consumption
levels. A person is considered poor if his or her consumption
or income falls below a minimum level necessary to meet
basic needs. This minimum level is called the poverty line.
What is necessary to satisfy basic needs varies across time
and societies, therefore, poverty lines vary in time and
place. Every country uses lines which are appropriate to its
level of development, societal norms and values. When
estimating poverty worldwide, the same reference poverty
line has to be used and expressed in a common unit across
countries, therefore, for the purpose of global aggregation
and comparison, the World Bank uses reference lines set at
US$ 1 and US$ 2 per day in 1993 (World Bank, 2001).
Poverty in rural areas of Pakistan during the 1960s was
42.28%. However the incidence of rural poverty decreased
in the 1970s (ADB, 2002; Bari, 2003). This was the period
when private investment in agriculture reached its peak.
There was also very heavy out-migration from the rural
areas which resulted in increased foreign remittances, a
major reason behind falling poverty trends in the country.
Declining trends in poverty continued in the 1980s,
largely due to the inflow of remittances and the relatively
better performance of the agriculture sector (ADB, 2002;
IUCN, 2002). However, since the late 1980s, rural poverty
levels have started to rise. Despite the fairly strong
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
255
performance of agriculture over the 1990s, where its
average growth rate stayed above the population growth
rate, rural poverty increased significantly. In 199091, rural
poverty was 25.2% against 38.65% in 200203 (see Table 1).
Poverty in Pakistan is characterized by large amounts
of clustering around the poverty line. According to the
Planning Commission, as much as 63% of the poor
population falls between the poverty line and a level of
consumption that is equivalent to 75% of the poverty line
(GOP, 2003). This suggests a high proportion of poverty
vulnerable population exists as a result of changing
economic conditions. The Gini Coefficient, a measure of
inequality, has also increased significantly during 1990
(See Table 1). So even though rural incomes were
increasing in the 1990s, there were increasing distributional
asymmetries that were also coming in. The rich, in rural
areas, continued to get richer, while the rural poor became
poorer. These figures do show that the share of the middle
classes has also gone down.
During the 1990s, the government reduced subsidies in
agricultural inputs. Fertilizer, pesticide and seed markets
were directly hit by these cuts while the prices of fuel,
electricity and water rose. This might have affected the cost
of production and income levels.
5. Agriculture growth
Until the late 1960s, Pakistan produced a surplus of food
items and had enjoyed a favorable balance of trade for
being a net exporter of food products as well as cash crops.
Thereafter, this position was retained intermittently for a
short time. Since the early eighties, due to high population
growth, water shortage and frequent natural calamities like
floods, import of food items has become indispensable. The
average annual agriculture growth rate over the 1990s was
4.54% which was lower than the average in the 1980s.
Agricultural output over the 1990s varied from year to year.
Although the growth rate was slightly lower, it remained
positive throughout except for the period 199293. The
country witnessed unprecedented drought during 200001
and 200102 and, consequently, agriculture registered
negative growth in these two years. The next two years
witnessed a modest recovery in agricultural growth as a
result of improvement in the availability of water for
irrigation purposes. In 200405, remarkable growth
reached as high as 7.5% (GOP, 2005a).
6. Population growth
The population of Pakistan has increased from 33 million
at the time of independence in 1947 to 153.95 million in
2005, making it the seventh most populous country in
the world. The population grew at an average rate of
3% per annum from 1951 until the mid-1980s. Population
256 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262
growth slowed to an average rate of 2.6% per annum
between 1985 and 2000. Since 200001 the countrys
population has grown at an annual average rate of almost
2.2%. The current growth rate is considerably high compared
with the average population growth of developed and
developing countries which is 0.9 and 1.7% respectively
(GOP, 2005a).
7. Agricultural growth and poverty
Evidence consistently shows that agricultural growth is
highly effective in reducing poverty. Gallup et al. (1997)
reported that every 1% increase in per capita agricultural
output led to a 1.61% increase in the incomes of the poorest
20% of the population. Thirtle et al. (2001) concluded
from a major cross-country analysis that, on average, every
1% increase in agricultural yields reduced the number of
people living on less than US$ 1 a day by 0.83%. Broad-
based agricultural productivity growth raises incomes of
poor farm households as well as households of landless
labourers who primarily depend on agricultural wages.
Increased agricultural productivity also brings strong
indirect benefits for the poor. The most important pro-poor
linkage is generated by the effects of agricultural
productivity growth on food prices (Timmer, 1997). The
poor typically spend a high share of their income on staple
foods, and therefore they benefit from a productivity-
induced decline in the real prices of staple foods. Benefits
are largest for the urban poor and landless labourers, but
even many poor farmers benefit, since they are net food
purchasers. Widely shared increases in incomes of farmers
and farm workers also reduce poverty by providing a
market for labour-intensive consumer goods.
Agriculture makes important contributions to nutrition,
food security, and macroeconomic stability beyond the pro-
poor growth linkages (Timmer, 2002). At the micro level,
inadequate and irregular access to food reduces labour
productivity and decreases investment in human capital
(Bliss and Stern, 1978; Strauss, 1986; Fogel, 1994).
Drawing on a sample of 97 countries, Nadav (1996) found
that nutritional levels had a large and highly significant
impact on economic growth. Fogel (1991) has also reported
that increased caloric intake reduced mortality and raised
productivity amongst the working poor during the early
stages of Western Europes development. Overcoming
hunger and malnutrition is now explicitly recognized as the
first Millennium Development Goal.
8. Poverty and gender aspects
Until recently women were considered in rural development
programmes as adjuncts to their husbands, or as daughters
or mothers. It was assumed that womens positions would
improve as the economic prosperity of their husbands did.
However, this assumption denied the unequal power
relationships which exist between men and women and
between people of different castes, races and classes
(Commonwealth Secretariat, 2001). Gender discriminatory
practices are prevalent in Pakistani society. Women and
girls experience intra-household discrimination in food
distribution, healthcare and education. This is evident from
gender disaggregated statistics whereby female literacy is
only 42% as compared to 65% for men and gender gaps
persist at all levels of the education system (GOP, 2007).
Pakistan is also one of the few countries in the world where
the sex ratio is biased in favor of men and there are 108
men to every 100 women (GOP, 2005b).
Womens participation in the labour market in Pakistan
is determined by rigid gender role ideologies, social and
cultural restrictions on womens mobility and occupational
segregation. Another important barrier to women working
for pay in the rural sector is the time burden imposed by
domestic tasks, especially the collection of water and
firewood. In rural communities, the impoverishment is very
acute in households critically dependent on womens labour
for survival, due to the relatively lower skills base of
women generally, and their restricted mobility. As a result,
women find it difficult to compete for access to social and
productive assets on an equal footing with men.
9. Agriculture growth and the role of gender
In Pakistan, women typically do not own land and, when
they do, they typically do not control it (Morrison et al.,
2007). Land rights are regulated by Islamic law; however,
general practice deviates from principle to the detriment of
women. According to Agarwal (1994) in South Asia the
gap between female ownership and control is due to a mix
of interrelated factors including, among other things,
norms which circumscribe womens mobility and social
interactions, illiteracy, and male control over (access to)
technology, information, and labour.
Men use family labour in the field and female members
are not paid but are fed, clothed and provided with a dowry
by fathers at the time of marriage; ornaments by husbands;
and when widowed, shelter by sons (Panhwar, 1998). The
productive work done within the household and in
agriculture fields by women has been ignored and not much
attempt has been made to incorporate the value of such
activities within the national accounts. This is the main
reason behind the exceptionally low female labour
participation rate of 18.93% compared to 71.97% for men
in Pakistan (GOP, 2007).
In order to strengthen the roles of women in agriculture,
and thereby improve their status, women should be paid and
have control over the cash earned as a result of their labour.
Greater control of income by women will enhance their
control over decision making, positively affect the wealth
of the family, especially girls, and may help in closing the
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262 257

income and education gaps between genders (Morrison
et al., 2007). Increasing the education and income level
of women, in the long run, will not only contribute to the
quality of the labour force and hence to productivity, but
also to food security through a lower rate of population
growth.
be high for those who depend solely on livestock or on
small land (Nazli, 2003) as the income from the former
accounts for only 1.84% of rural incomes (Malik, 2005).
This clearly indicates that the poor tend to be landless
livestock owners or small landholders who do not own
livestock.

10. Sources of income in rural households 11. Land reform and security of land tenure

The major sources of income in rural Pakistan are
farming, agricultural wages and salaries and domestic and
international remittance. According to Malik (2005),
farm crops/products accounted for 49.49%, wages and
salaries accounted for 35.81%, domestic and international
remittance accounted for 11.14%, farming live product
accounted for 1.84% and rental income for 1.73% of
average household income in rural areas. Arif, Nazli
and Haq (2000) and Adams and He (1995) found that
wages, salaries and self-employment income are the
major sources of non-farm income. For the self-employed,
wholesale and retail trade appear to be the most important
economic activities, whereas wage employees are con-
centrated in the construction sector. The construction
sector absorbs most of the unskilled and low-skilled
labour.
The majority of the non-poor are large landholders and
depend on crops, however a significant percentage of non-
poor are small landholders that depend on both crops
and livestock. Livestock is an important component of
livelihood in rural Pakistan as 3035 million people are
involved in livestock raising and these contribute 35 to
40% of their income (GOP, 2007). Nazli (2003) found
that 47% of rural households depend either on farm or
livestock for their livelihood while 13% of households
depend solely on livestock. Adams and He (1995) have
termed livestock as an inequality reducing source of
income. An increase of activities in this sector has
important consequences for poverty reduction in the
country, since a little support enables a landless farmer to
generate his income stream. However poverty is found to
The literature has consistently underlined the key role of
relatively equitable land distribution and the dominance of
small-scale family farming in realizing the potential of pro-
poor growth. Work carried out by Vollrath (2006) shows a
significant negative relationship between land inequality as
measured by the Gini coefficient and output per hectare.
A drop in the Gini coefficient for the size of operational
land holdings of one standard deviation would increase
output per hectare by 8.5%. Jeon and Kim (2000) have
documented significant productivity gains from the land
reforms undertaken in Korea in the 1950s which limited
the amount of land any individual could own. Besley and
Burgess (2000) find that land reforms in India were
associated with lower poverty and higher agricultural
wages. They do find that land reforms had their greatest
effect in those Indian states with the greatest initial land
inequality. On the other side, increase in population is
proportionate to the decrease in the number of large and
mid-sized farms. Excessive land fragmentation and sub-
division of landholdings from generation to generation are
also causing a persistent decline in the size of farms and
therefore in agricultural productivity. The poor households
in all the countries studied had a larger family size with a
greater dependency ratio.
Landlessness and the limited access to land is a glaring
feature of rural poverty in Pakistan. Smaller farms tend to
be less diversified and unable to cope with vulnerability.
Table 2 shows the agricultural land distribution by farm
size in Pakistan. Land distribution is much skewed. Eighty-
one percent of farms owned are less than 5 hectares in
size and cover only 38.7% of the total farm area. Only

Table 2. Classification of farms in Pakistan by size

Size of farm (acres) Number of farms (%) Farm area (%)

1960 1972 1980 1990 2000 1960 1972 1980 1990 2000

Under 5 19.0 28.2 34.1 47.5 57.6 3.0 5.2 7.1 11.3 15.5
5 to < 12.5 44.3 39.9 39.4 33.4 28.1 23.6 25.2 27.3 27.5 27.9
12.5 to < 25 23.8 21.1 17.3 12.2 8.8 27.0 26.6 24.7 21.5 19.1
25 to < 50 9.0 7.7 6.5 4.7 3.9 19.0 18.8 17.8 15.8 16.3
50 to < 150 3.3 2.7 2.4 1.8 1.2 16.0 15.1 14.7 13.9 9.6
> 150 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.2 11.5 9.1 8.5 10.1 11.6
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100

Source: UN (2000).

2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.

258 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262
6.8% of large farms hold more than 10 hectares, accounting
for 39.8% of the farm area. Small farms tend to use
farming systems that are more labour intensive and less
risky, while big farms prefer farming systems that are more
intensive in capital as they can afford to take risks in the
hope of higher returns.
Because of highly skewed distribution of land
ownership, the incidence of sharecropping in Pakistan has
increased in recent years. Poverty among sharecroppers has
been found to be considerably higher. However, further
research is needed to understand tenancy and share-
cropping arrangements and to find ways to address poverty
among those groups. In general, ways that increase the
opportunity of the poor to earn increased incomes and
methods to heighten their security and empower them
will lead to poverty reduction. This suggests broad based
land reforms are required to ensure equitable access to
productive resources and the restructuring of rural society
on an egalitarian line. Such efforts have met with varying
degrees of success in different countries depending on the
correlation of socio-political forces.
There is also a need to concentrate more on income
sources that are independent of land in order to reduce rural
poverty. And, in order to reduce the dependence on the
agricultural sector, there is a need for generating off-farm
employment opportunities. This suggests providing easy
access to credit, technology and information in the short
run. In addition, there is an urgent need in the long run to
enhance human capital through better quality education,
training and health.
12. Additional land under cultivation
Out of 79.6 million hectares in the country, only 20 million
hectares are available for farming in Pakistan (GOP, 2003).
Irrigated agriculture is practiced on 16 million hectares and
the remaining 4 million hectares utilize rain fed (known as
Barani) farming. A sizeable portion of about 31 million
hectares are forests and rangelands. The land use data for
the last decade show that the total area under cultivation
remained static (GOP, 2003). Land availability has become
a constraint in increasing food production and supply. The
diminishing supply of per capita arable land, combined
with rapid population growth is resulting in rising
urbanization. Significant improvements are required in
productivity growth in agriculture to increase agricultural
output through technological innovations and efficiency.
The government emphasis is on bringing additional land
under cultivation through provision of adequate and
efficiently managed water resources. According to the
Economic Survey of Pakistan 200405 (GOP, 2005a), the
government investment in on-going, water-related projects
will bring an additional 2.88 million acres of land under
irrigation and 4.44 million cubic feet of additional water
will be available for the agricultural sector in the next 23
years. The government is expecting that it will boost
agriculture output, productivity and employment in rural
areas in a sustained manner and will help reduce poverty,
particularly in rural areas. However, unsuitable rules for
acquiring access to land can lead to environmental degradation.
The implementation of the Pakistan governments land
capitalization policy will negatively impact on the quality
of the environment since some land in the capitalization
project is in the forest reserve and other protected areas.
However, environmental degradation has not been at the
centre of any government policies in the past decade. The
impact of government policy should be examined, since it
will not only affect the well-being of the poor, but also the
quality of natural resources and the environment.
13. Access to education
Although land and labour are the most important assets of
the poor in the early stages of growth, access to education
and capital is more important in modernizing agriculture
and rural non-farm sector development. Agricultural
productivity, especially in modernizing agriculture,
rural non-farm growth, and migration are all stimulated
by investment in rural education and access to well-
functioning finance markets. Over the long term, efforts to
improve access to schooling in rural areas and especially
to improve the quality of that education remain the best
hope for equipping the rural poor with the skills to
participate in expanding on-farm and off-farm diversification
opportunities, including migration to better paid employment
in urban areas.
14. Production efficiency
Development economists say that industrialization cannot
achieve the goal of prosperity without the simultaneous
transformation of the agricultural sector, the source of
sustenance of the bulk of the nations people. Therefore, in
the presence of an ever increasing population, a rise in
agricultural productivity is imperative to support the
growing needs of the people. Even though the last decade
has seen a concentration of development in the urban
manufacturing sector, Pakistan is still essentially an
agricultural economy. Rising agricultural productivity is
central to economic development and has been studied by
the historians of many countries (Allen, 2000). Crop yields
have received considerable attention and progress has been
made in understanding their evolution.
The productivity of land can potentially respond to land
scarcity without outside aid. The yield of major crops in
Pakistan is significantly below the demonstrated potential
(see Table 3), which is attributed to poor quality seed, low
seed rate, conventional sowing methods, inefficient use of
fertilizers, poor management practices and low level of
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262
Table 3. Value addition and potential yield gaps of various crops in Pakistan
Crops Share in total value added in Share in GDP (%)
agriculture (%) (GOP, 2006) (GOP, 2006)
Cotton (lint) 8.6 1.9
Wheat 13.7 3.0
Rice 6.1 1.3
Sugar cane 3.4 0.7
Maize
Sources: GOP (2006); UN (2000).
farm mechanization. The production efficiency can be
improved through the use of appropriate technologies.
Researchers in environmental economics, demographics
and population studies are generally in agreement that
improvements in agricultural productivity will break the
populationpovertyenvironmental degradation cycle. The
first aim of the government of Pakistan should be to
enhance the productivity of the agricultural sector through
the provision of required capital inputs to accelerate the
transformation process. These inputs range from provision
of easy credit to the small farmers, availability of
unadulterated fertilizer and pesticide, tractor and harvester
services, improvement in the efficiency of the vast
irrigation system, utilization of cultivable wastes and
finally farmers education.
Agricultural technologies and techniques are constantly
changing and farmers need to be made aware of and know
how to use agricultural innovations for the exploitation of
inherent yield potentials. As evident in Asian countries, the
shift into cash cropping will press farmers to sacrifice their
own food crops and lead to more food insecurity.
The prices of inputs in the production process have to
be rationalized to reduce the costs of cultivation, which
inevitably push up food prices. The development of the
agro-business and the service sector in rural areas is
imperative to absorb the pressure of surplus labour. The
existence of the powerful informal sector with large
landholders exerting control over the rural labour and
capital market has to be abolished for the transformation
mechanisms to have any effect.
15. Technological developments in agriculture
Agriculture has strong direct forward linkages to agricultural
processing and backward linkages to input-supply industries
(Johnston and Mellor, 1961). It is known empirically that
a large share of manufacturing in the early stages of
development is agriculturally related (Pryor and Holt,
1999; Gemmell et al., 2000). In addition, technological
change and productivity growth in agriculture were
linked to lower food prices, which in turn held down
urban wages and stimulated industrialization and structural
transformation.
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
259
National Average Yield Potential Yield (Tonnes Yield Gaps
(Tonnes per hectare) (GOP, 2006) per hectare) (UN, 2000) (Tonnes per hectare)
0.682 1.4 0.718
2.61 6.4 3.8
2.117 9.5 7.38
48.86 160.0 111.15
3.48 6.9 3.42
Current globalization has affected all countries with an
aggressive market based economy. The industrial sector is
dominating and agriculture is getting commercialized due
to private sector investment. The technologies are generated
based on demand. These technologies may not be within
the reach of the small farmers and the old technologies are
also getting outdated as the products are not of the right
quality to compete in the new global markets. Improved
crop varieties could easily be adopted by small farmers, but
it may not be the case with other technologies such as
irrigation, machinery, high tech agriculture, etc. These are
more favorable to commercial farmers; the poor may not
adopt them or may do so with a long time lag when
conditions become favorable.
Agricultural research has led to significant increases in
productivity and enhanced incomes in developing countries
(Lipton and Longhurst, 1989). The development of improved
cultivators and management practices, mechanization,
improved plant nutrition and crop protection technologies
have been in the forefront of contributions to increased crop
yields in many developing countries. The green revolution,
which predominated in the early 1960s contributed to
unprecedented increases in food production. Wheat and
rice yields increased several fold. In the 1970s, due to
the impact of the green revolution, rural poverty declined
as agricultural growth and purchasing power of the people
rose. Advances in agricultural science and technology have
increased productivity and have a significant role in the
quest to improve food and nutritional security and reduce
the number of poor.
A study in India (Chadha, 2002) has indicated that new
technologies generally benefit the poor after a time lag.
Even the green revolution technologies, which initially worked
against the poor, benefited them later on. Therefore, the
benefits of technology will accrue to the second generation
and not necessarily to those who are currently in the grip
of poverty. This indicates that research should be targeted
towards poor farmers over the short term, as well as for
long-term development. In addition, the government should
make arrangements to provide the poor with the knowledge
and skills needed to enable new technology to benefit them.
This cast some light on the researchpoverty alleviation linkage.
The Asian successes were generated by a technological
breakthrough in the form of high yielding varieties of rice
260 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262
and wheat, which provided a historically unprecedented
jump in agricultural productivity, especially when farmers
also had access to fertilizer and irrigation. While consistent
productivity gains have been achieved since then, growth
has been much slower, and there are concerns about yield
stagnation.
In the present scenarios, biotechnology has emerged
as a novel area of scientific endeavour with huge potential
to realize the dream of sustainable agriculture. Being
enriched by inputs from both conventional and modern
scientific experimentation like genomic research, bio-
technology could prove a panacea for uplifting degraded
socio-economic and scientific infrastructure on a sound
basis in all developing countries like Pakistan. Across
the globe, intensive work is going on to exploit biotech
knowledge augmented with genome reshuffling to address
major agricultural and environmental issues like salinity,
drought and biodiversity degradation which the green
revolution has so far failed to resolve. However, the recent
developments in biotechnology are driven by private and
commercial agricultural interests and we are yet to see any
impact on food crops grown by small-scale farmers in the
developing world.
In Pakistan, a major portion of irrigated and rain-fed area
is salt affected. Since the green revolution, different strategies
based on physio-chemical methodologies have been proposed
by scientific communities. Admittedly, some success stories
exist within the domain of these approaches but in most
cases, these proved timely. None of these helped the farming
sector on a sustainable and long-term basis. Particularly,
under natural conditions, it has not been possible to reap a
large harvest due to the arid conditions. Drought coupled
with salt affected conditions has proved a major limiting
factor in the success of these conventional approaches to
the attainment of sustainable agriculture.
Likewise the pest problem remained unresolved and
became more severe. About 3050% of food produced
becomes victim to pests each year. In addition, extensive
use of pesticides on crops has yielded contaminated
commodities. Indiscriminate use of pesticides has also
played havoc with environmental quality, biodiversity and
public health in many parts of the country.
16. Poverty and land degradation
The impact of population on agricultural production includes
low land per capita, intensive use of land, and a higher
household income generation dependency ratio on land.
The two most important driving forces behind the land
degradation in Pakistan are limited land resources and
increase in population. The result is small farms, low
production per person and increasing landlessness. Land
shortage and poverty, taken together, lead to non-
sustainable land management practices, the direct cause of
degradation. Poor farmers are forced to clear forests,
cultivate steep slopes without conservation, overgraze
rangelands and make unbalanced fertilizer applications.
Land degradation then leads to reduced productivity: a
lower response to the same inputs or, where farmers
possess the resources, a need for higher inputs to maintain
crop yields and farm incomes. This increases land shortage
thus accentuating the cycle.
17. Poverty reduction strategy
Over the past several decades, there has been increasing
acceptance worldwide that rapid economic growth over a
prolonged period is essential for poverty reduction. At the
macro level, economic growth implies greater availability
of public resources to improve the quantity and quality of
education, health and other services. At the micro level,
economic growth creates employment opportunities,
increases the income of the people and, therefore, reduces
poverty. Economic growth also benefits the poor, but only
if effective measures are taken focusing on and directly
empowering them. Therefore, rapid growth is vital, but it
has to be sustained and targeted for a meaningful reduction
in poverty. Many developing countries have succeeded in
boosting growth for a short period. But only those that have
achieved higher economic growth over a long period have
seen a lasting reduction in poverty, East Asia being a classic
example.
A vibrant agriculture in Pakistan is central to the
wellbeing of the largest and most rapidly growing section
of the population living in rural villages (Coxhead and
Jayasuriya, 1994), as well as for the welfare of the urban
population and those working in agro-industrial enterprises.
In the past 20 years, the country has generated economic
growth and strengthened its macroeconomic indicators by
implementing macroeconomic reforms. Like many other
developing countries, Pakistan has also made significant
efforts to integrate its economy with the rest of the world
by lowering tariffs and taking measures to open its
economy for investment. The performance of the economy
remained dismal in the 1990s which caused poverty to rise.
However, accounting for the rising trends in poverty during
the 1990s, the Government adopted a strategy for poverty
reduction in 2001. This strategy focuses mainly on five
areas which include i) accelerating economic growth and
maintaining macroeconomic stability; ii) investing in
human capital; iii) augmenting targeted interventions; iv)
expanding social safety nets and v) improving governance
(GOP, 2003).
Agriculture plays an important role in economic
development, such as provision of food to the nation,
increase in exports, transfer of manpower to non-agricultural
sectors, contribution to capital formation, and securing
markets for industrialization. Improvement in agricultural
productivity is the answer to realization of each of these
goals. Historical records have shown that agricultural
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
 Abdul Waheed Bhutto and Aqeel Ahmed Bazmi / Natural Resources Forum 31 (2007) 253262
productivity has been growing due to the introduction of
modern technologies, commercialization of agriculture,
increased availability of capital, factor shifts from
agriculture to non-agricultural sectors, etc. This whole
process could be called agricultural transformation, to
which the contribution of each of these factors has been
quantified in the existing literature.
A successful strategy for alleviating poverty and hunger
in developing countries must begin by recognizing that they
are mainly rural phenomena and that agriculture is at the
heart of the livelihoods of rural people. The dilemma of
Pakistans poverty reduction strategy is that it is aimed at
poverty reduction without boosting agriculture. The spread
of irrigation networks and modern farming techniques are
both still missing in the policy packages. Pakistan has great
potential in agriculture and should keep on working on its
agricultural development, which is crucial for poverty
reduction. All our poverty reduction strategies should
primarily focus on development of the agriculture sector
for the sake of the poor and industrialization for employment
generation leading to reduction of poverty. Other issues that
need to be addressed are, (i) soil erosion and degradation;
(ii) inappropriate fertilizer and pesticide use; (iii)
inadequate availability of quality seed; (iv) inadequate
markets infrastructure; (v) non-availability of adequate
farm power; and (vi) weakness of agricultural research and
extension services.
All measures that are supposed to alleviate poverty must
target the poor strata, providing them with the means of
living, helping them build productive assets and generate
income.
18. Conclusion
The analysis brings out the correlation among rural
poverty, access to land, population growth and agricultural
growth. Agriculture continues to be one of the most
important sectors of Pakistans economy and has the
potential for addressing unemployment, for the medium
term at least, since it has higher employment elasticity than
industry. Rising population, shrinking agricultural land,
increasing demand on limited water resources from the
expanding industrial and urban sectors, widespread land
degradation and inadequacy of governing infrastructure are
major concerns in the agriculture sector.
Pakistan should give high priority to enhancing the
productivity of the agricultural sector through the provision
of required capital inputs. These inputs range from
provision of easy credit to the small farmers, availability
of unadulterated fertilizer and pesticide, tractor and
harvester services, improvement in the efficiency of the
vast irrigation system, utilization of cultivable wastes and
farmer education. The development of irrigation, rural
electrification and rural roads and transport should also
receive high priority in the development plans of the
2007 The Authors. Journal compilation 2007 United Nations.
261
country giving impetus to the growth of agriculture and
rural industries, raising the incomes of small farmers and
artisans and increasing the employment opportunities for
the rural poor, in general. The above trend in agricultural
growth will increase income and reduce poverty.
The high rate of population growth needs to be checked
for the increased agricultural productivity to have any
significant effect on poverty. Greater control of income by
women will positively affect the wealth of the family,
especially girls, and help to close the income and education
gaps between genders, and should increase food security
through a lower rate of population growth.
Legitimate efforts are required to review biotech
approaches in respective fields and future research work
should be based on novel ideas that have direct impacts on
food crops grown by small-scale farmers. There is also a
dire need to upgrade the infrastructure of research institutes
by undertaking reforms proposed by the scientific
communities. Efforts should be made to rehabilitate degraded
landscapes for production of high quality commodities.
Exploitation of biological alternatives employed for
sustainable crop production and environmental remediation
should be promoted at academic and research institutes to
resolve the different agricultural and environmental issues.
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