Pakistan's self-inflicted agricultural decay
The "First cause" of agricultural ailment is embedded in a feudal ecosystem defined by unviable subsistence farming on millions of fragmented, land-crippled micro farms, covering 71.5% of the country's cropped area. This system yields diminishing returns, and agricultural growth policies have consistently failed – and will continue to fail – as undeniably evident from the last quarter-century agricultural record.
Agriculture growth (FY00 to FY25) remained a meager 2.63% with real GDP rising from Rs5.018 trillion to Rs9.603 trillion, barely keeping pace with population growth (2.32%). Consequently, per capita agricultural GDP inched up just 0.29% (Rs37k to Rs40k), showing no change in rural poverty-ridden lives. While livestock ( 3.81%) outperformed all others, forestry ( 0.16%) and fishing ( 1.17%) lagged. Crops grew ( 1.18%) less than half the population growth, leaving the country in persistent food scarcity for 25 years and counting (ACGR, Annual National Accounts 24/25).
Why this prolonged stagnation? The answer lies in unviable landholding that traces back to the British Raj. Unlike the Mughals, they engineered a loyal landed-feudal class and cemented it into a Feudal-Military-Bureaucratic alliance (PakRaj nexus). They blocked Jinnah's land reforms and, after his death in 1948, captured the country's trajectory, entrenching rural dependency and poverty – an irony that still wins them votes, translating into legislative power to control state institutions in an unbroken cycle.
Successive governments, seeking feudal patronage, abandoned land reforms after 1977. Instead, they peddle "Kisan-friendly" rhetoric,........
© The Express Tribune
