Extract from unfinished novel:

 Extract from unfinished novel:

Nawaz along with his mother, father, three brothers and two sisters, climbed aboard the third class compartment of Karachi Express .The bogie was crowded and Nawaz and family found space between the door and the stinking lavatory .They plunked their crude battered tin case along with two bundles of bed sheets and quilts on top of their meager luggage.

The train left Lahore in the evening, yet Lahore was sizzling hot and the crowded car made it a very uncomfortable journey .Morning found the train entering Sindh, but this was even worse, as the temperature was a shade higher than at Lahore .Coping with the dripping sweat was an unbearable activity .The train-stop at railway stations did allow Nawaz and his brothers to stretch their legs but the two girls were not even allowed this brief respite from the stifling conditions.

The food at the station was stale, unappetizing and quite expensive .Nawaz and his family carried about 40 chapattis and some sagh and dal ,which they had for meals .A baked earthen pitcher filled with water was their lifeline .This they had to refill at every station .The crowded car was made even more crowded by the throngs of retailers  selling biscuits, stale boiled eggs ,tea in small glasses strung on  wire  holders ,over ripe bananas ,health medicines meant to give special sexual powers ,special oil to grow hair on bald people , lottas and multitudes of such small items . These gentlemen screamed on the top of their voices and added to the infernal din .Beggars further added to the confusion, all kinds and sex and type of beggars competed with each other and with the retailing boys .Their bogie was too crowded for any sleep to be possible, the heat and the noise made it pretty much impossible.

The train shrieked past the yellowish brown farm lands, spewing clouds of black smoke, the environmentalists had not got their act together as yet .The farmland mosaic had just turned brown, the wheat crop was ripening and was close to being reaped .The farmland mosaic changed every few months from yellowish brown of the summer to the lush green of the autumn to the bright yellow of the winter .Nature along with human endeavor kept changing this mosaic as if  with a huge paint brush, the color scheme was never the same and each year brought different shades of brown, yellow and green .This seemingly cyclic change resulted in a different color mosaic every year.

                                                                             

The farmland was stretched across the irrigated part of the Punjab and Sindh plains. These had been formed out of gigantic cataclysms .The Indian plate, which was set adrift from the mother continent, after drifting for centuries across the ocean, struck with a immense impact the Asian plate .Like two male rams head butting to decide who is to be the owner of the harem. Only in this case it seems to have been inconclusive as after irregular intervals the plates seem to lock horns and create frightening shivers and quakes that destroyed many a community. In reality the collision and impact is still going on, the initial impact was dramatic but some 50 million after the fact it had not completely subsided.

The impact sandwiched smaller islands and impounded the sea in between the two plates .The impact resulted in a rapid uplift of the land .The high and imposing mountain that seem so stable and static are in fact very alive and dynamic .These generate ,from time to time, great destructive forces that shake the land and destroy communities like flies .Less dramatically ,but more importantly ,the mountains generate large amount of water that nourish the great plains that the mountains created in the first place and also the sediment which kept on depositing to extend the shore line further south-wards .

The sea that was trapped in between was squeezed out in a mad rush akin to a gigantic river swollen in a great deluge ,the water flowed to the Indian Ocean  .Some of the water that was trapped was to assist farmers many centuries later and some was trapped to form huge salt deposits that exist to this day .The water etched a deep ravine through which the river flowed .Over time ,when the great flood subsided , the river seemed to flow very deep down and from the bank on top looked to be a trickle .This was misleading as the great mountains shed large amounts of water all over the year and the river flow is always significant .

The water carried tones of sediment that got deposited after the water slowed down when it descended from the piedmont to form the Punjab and Sindh plains .Gradually and slowly, over countless centuries this plain gradually developed and slowly encroached upon the sea .Each year the shore line drifted further South, a process that is going on to this day, 50 millions years after the occurrence of the great impact.

The uplift also created a bifurcation in the huge river and instead of one great mass of water flowing east- west and then south wards many rivers started to flow .Some of these changed and reversed direction, due to the continued uplift, to drain into the Bay of Bengal .The uplift created a rift in the lands that were to be known to as Punjab and Sindh or the Indus Valley and between what came to be known as India.

This rift it seems was sanctioned by nature itself, as centuries later, after the formation of the plains, human populations also generally adhered to this rift, rarely did people of these two land unify .Strangely enough unification when it did take place happened under the influence of people who were alien to these lands and the union was political and not social or religious. The last of these outsiders were the British who were Christians and before them the Mogul, Pathan and Turkish tribes who were nominally Muslim.

Nawaz had bitter memories of the more recent reversion to the natural status quo between these two lands, Nawaz's father had in fact very painful memories of this division of lands .He had lost a younger sister, who was kidnapped and never returned and the entire family of eight of his brother was brutally massacred .The hatred of Sikhs and Hindus was therefore etched in his mind.

The forced travel to the new land was, to Nawaz’s parents, as violent and cataclysmic as the banging of the Indian and Asian plates century’s earlier .It was not without incident. The train ride to Lahore was harrowing ,he and his wife survived because they played dead and the karpan yielding Sikh youth left them for dead .They emerged from their crowded boogie at Lahore station ,except for them  not a single person was left alive .Both of Nawaz’s parents were drenched in the blood of the now dead fellow travelers .Nawaz his brothers and sisters, who had migrated to Sahiwal well before this great divide ,came to receive his parents .Both parents were unable to narrate the ordeal they had undergone to Nawaz or to the inquiring Army Captain .Both of them took many weeks before they could speak and then also they were still  unable to describe the horror they had undergone .Both of them frequently awoke, drenched in sweat ,in the middle of the night having reenacted the horror in their nightmare.

Nawaz, in all this confusion and clamor was happy .He had persuaded his father to sell his quarter acre land in Sahiwal that was allocated to them and from the proceeds he managed to buy 40 acres of land, on the edge of the dessert .This land he had bought from Arshad Ahmed Khan who had been allocated this land in lieu for lands that Arshad’s family had claimed to have lost near Delhi .Arshad in fact came from an urban environment and had no love or feel for the land ,the harsh conditions persuaded him to sell his bequest at some what lower than normal rates .The one visit to the land was enough to convince him that this definitely was not his cup of tea. Nawaz was oblivious to all the heat and noise , he was deep in thought about his plans to develop this land.

The train reached Nawabshah station seven hours late .Nawaz and his family got down and searched for the local train which would take them to Bandhi .From where they could walk to their land, but the train had left and Nawaz and his family had to spend the night on the platform.

They had by now eaten all the food they had brought .Nawaz was reluctant to buy any food from the platform .He had just enough money to buy the pair of bullocks he had sold at Sahiwal and for his seeds for the first crops .A little was left over for the train ride to Bandhi .They had purchased 20 chapattis and a few onions, these were crushed to provide the meal which unsurprisingly was very delicious as they were very hungry.

Although Nawaz seemed oblivious of his surroundings his brothers and sisters were not .Nawabshah station platform at night became very pleasant .Cool sea breeze from 300 km away made the night very enjoyable .Clear sky and the cool breeze helped the family to partly forget the miserable train journey .They spent a rather comfortable night in the platform .Morning sun, however, completely changed all this .The pleasant, cool evening and night turned into a blazing, hot morning.

They finally found their local train which was in no hurry to leave .It finally did leave about four hours later than it should have. Leisurely the train passed through lush green land, which was browner than green this time of the year, on both sides of the car they were traveling .This was a third class compartment and it was smaller than the one they had traveled on Karachi Express, but this one was even more crowded and was dirtier.

Hungry , thirsty and sweating to their toes they reached Bandhi .A small sleepy town ,which was the market place for farmers to bring their produce to sell to the middlemen ,from whom they had already taken cash loans for seeds ,fertilizer and their other needs .The town had a small post office and a police station .

The dusty main street had small shops on both sides .The middlemen also had their somewhat larger offices along the road, most had godowns, that were larger, but away form the main street .The shops had very high roofs and a wooden plank was strung across the roof .Hanging from the plank was a tough piece of cloth made taut by stretching across a thick rope. .A man sat half dozing, he would pull the string attached to the plank, when ever he awoke from his rather fitful slumber and this generated a whisper of a breeze.

These shops and other houses behind it were surprisingly cool, these were mostly building constructed by the by the Hindus who had left for India after partition These building were cool in spite of the stifling heat and the blazing sun .The roof was very high, the walls were made of mud bricks plastered with shredded jute bags kneaded in the limestone and sand mixture .The roof was thick and made similar to the walls,

The post office was made in modern style, with baked bricks, cement mortar plaster and this rendered it as hot as an oven .It was simply impossible to enter this building from late morning to early evening, which was why the postman sat outside on his depilated cot, under a small tree, puffing on his hookah.

Khadim was one of the partners in a middleman business, his partner Ibrahim had inherited the business from the Hindu baniya Randho Mal, who tried to keep his business running much after partition, but old age and migration of family and relatives forced him to sell his business. Ibrahim who also belonged to Sahiwal purchased all of Randho Mal’s business, his house and his position in the local economy .This meant that Ibrahim was also the unofficial banker .He like Randho, advanced money against collateral, which usually was jewelry and less frequently title documents to the land. Ibrahim had also purchased the main store of the town from Rando, this store carried cloth and food stuff that was obtained from Karachi and sold at a handsome profit to the farmers.

 Ibrahim was as shrewd as Rahdo and did fit in Ranho’s shoes rather well. There was ,however , one area where Ibrahim and his partner failed and that was to become a part of the power structure .Randho and his like had evolved a method by which they ensured protection and a free license to exhort money from hapless farmers .Randho would advance money at rather high rates and this was secured credit as it was covered by either Jewelry ,of about three times the value of the loan or land documents which were also valued many times the amount of the loan .It was his greed that finally did his kind in .They had ,over time ,obtained claims to ownership a large percentage of the land in the district and the Province .Unfortunately for Randho ,and his kind ,most of the large landowners, protectors of Randho and co, found the partition a very convenient excuse to get out of the loan obligations of the Hindu Baniya .Ibrahim did avoid this pitfall and lent money to smaller landowners at somewhat less than exorbitant rates .

The system that Randho and his community had perfected was that one of the their daughter was always married to the Baluch Wadera ,who was the virtual king in the area .His authority was only superseded by the Pirs who had an arrangement by which they controlled most of Sindh .The Pir and Wadera thus controlled the whole of Sindh ,both professed to be outsiders ,one Syed and the other Baluch .Ibrahim and his kind lacked the instinctive knowledge of how to integrate within the local power structure .Very hard working , frugal and shrewd Ibrahim was more than equal replacement to Randho but Ibrahim was not prepared to have family ties with the Wadera and the Pir .This was an odd reluctance .The Hindu Binaya was willing  to have his daughter wed the wadera but the Muslim Ibrahim and his kind were not .It was this failure that was to nullify all his toil and acumen for in the end the Pir and wadera managed to exhort money in one form or other and his life time of struggle was severely devalued.

The Hindu Binaya had integrated into the social fabric but his replacement, co-religionist of the local population, failed to do so and thereby created a fissure in the social set up .The Sindh rural set up was perhaps brutal and repressive but for all that there was cohesion and the society was closely knit in intricate relationships, all of this was fractured by the arrival of Ibrahim and Nawaz and Arshad and their kind.

Nawaz and his family got out of the station and with their meager luggage on their head started their trudge to their land .They passed the main street, which was rather quite in the hot late afternoon.

Walking out of the town they were greeted with the same yellowish brown hue that the land had leaving Lahore only here it was more brown that yellow as the wheat crop had ripened and was in the process of being reaped ,being located South and nearer to the equator the crops ripened earlier in Sindh than in Punjab . Walking a few mile out of the town they found the landscape turning to a semi desert, it was not as brown and was much less cultivated, at about the end of this semi arid landscape Nawaz finally reached his land .For this he and his father had traveled many miles, had undergone numerous mishaps but finally he was at the land of his dream.

For all of Nawaz’s excitement the land that they had reached was a sorry looking piece .It was a far cry from the lush green village in Indian Punjab that they had belonged to .That village, in East Punjab, was situated at the bottom of the hilly-mountainous area, small streams and ponds dotted the country side and for most of the year it was very green and comfortable. Even the village in Sahiwal was greener and the land more hospitable than this desolate desert that was Nawaz’s farm .It was not leveled and was dotted by sand dunes and small desert shrub .Yet he was happy and seemed to have achieved the dream that generations of his family had pined for .He considered himself extremely lucky .His new farm land was in reality a part of the desert, only Nawaz was fortunate as the irrigation canal did reach his land and this ensured that every fourteen days or so he would get enough water to irrigate less than half his land. The water was available only because the provincial government, in order to establish rights, used the British built canal feeding the area at significantly higher discharge than the design discharge

They reached the centre of their land and chose a spot where they would build their rather modest house .There was not even a tree which could provide shelter and Nawaz and his brothers went out to collect twigs and some stout sticks to rig a makeshift shelter .By now it had cooled down and the blazing hot sun was turning various hues of orange ,the same sea breeze that greeted them at Nawabshah started blowing, the desert started to cool down and some of the misery of the journey began to wear away .

The temporary shelter only solved one problem but the more important one of feeding the family was still to be resolved .They still had a few chappaties with them, these were barely edible as the great heat they had traveled through made these almost stale, but their greater problem was that they did not have even the onions that made up the meal at Nawabshah.

The only asset that Nawaz had was a double barrel gun and a few shots. The money that they had was enough for the first seed and for the pair of bullocks that were crucial for their farming effort .Nawaz was not prepared to use any of this money.

He took his gun and started walking towards the desert .The desert which formed a part of the Thar-Cholistan desert had not always been as unwelcoming as it was to Nawaz .One of the lesser rivers, that drained towards the sea ,passed through what had now become the desert .The river was once host to perhaps the greatest urban civilization of its time ,The Harappan and Mohenjadaroen people evolved the earliest and the most systematic urban community .The civilization was also perhaps the one that evolved or discovered the One God concept which was passed on to Abraham pbuh and resulted in the three Monist religions .The land uplift ,that resulted from the great head butt, was perhaps responsible for the drying out of the river and over centuries the land turned in a harsh desert .

Nawaz was completely unfamiliar with the desert .He kept on walking deeper into the desert and after a while saw large amount of pebbles the size of small grapefruits lying scattered around few shrubs .This was unexpected as these stones seemed to be completely out of place .Nawaz got curious and started walking towards these stone as he neared he heard the sound of many wings flapping and incredibly the pebbles turned into birds and flew away .He was so shocked and surprised that he forgot to aim and fire his gun ,this meant that he lost the only chance they had of a proper meal that afternoon .They had to eat their chapattis with water from their earthen water urn but the encounter with stone turning into birds did teach Nawaz the way to get high class proteins for their many a next meals .

By now it was getting dark and the desert suddenly turned unfamiliar as Nawaz lost his bearings .He was completely lost and the desert with very few landmarks seemed the same in all directions .Fortunately for Nawaz he found his footsteps still visible in the sand and retreated back to his farm .This was another lesson that he learned about the desert .This also put a fear and respect for the desert in his mind.

Next morning he got up very early and trudged back to the desert .This time he was more careful and froze as soon as saw the pebbles .He cocked his gun and fired as soon as the partridges started to flee .He got six birds and that morning his mother helped by her daughters cooked the most delicious meal that they had eaten for a long time .For many months the partridges stood between hunger and Nawaz’s family.

Nawaz’s immediate neighbor was Allah Dino who was the local Wadera and owned larger tracts of land in the district .He was the Baluch wadera who had taken over political and social control of the area after the last Baluch incursion unto the area .Although Dino was a wadera, a feudal. and a outsider he and his like integrated into the social fabric of the land .They immediately shifted to Sindhi ,the local language  , and owned the local heroes and icons .Shah Abdul Latif became the defining poet ,his sufic poetry ,which was immensely powerful ,described the sufic concepts in simple but very beautiful language ,much like Bulah Shah who did the same in Punjabi . The Baluch control of most of Sindh occurred in phases which continues to this day .The early efforts were war like and aggressive but the modern efforts are more subtle but equally successful .The modern Baluch control occurs due to fact that the lazy and indolent local slowly loses control of his land and other means of production to the more dynamic and aggressive outsider .The old and new Baluch incursions ,however ,did not create a rift in the social fabric as the outsiders accepted and adopted the more sophisticated local culture and arrangements and are therefore fully assimilated into the local population .

Allah Dino had large land holdings which were cultivated through the Hari system .About 16 acre pieces were allocated to hari families who cultivated the land .The produce was shared between the Wadera and the hari after deduction of direct expenses .This meant that the hari was barely able to meet his most basic of his basic needs .The wadera was in fact owner of the hari ,his women were free game for the wadera and his sons .The wadera did provide insurance against catastrophic events and in that sense gave insurance against hunger and other calamities .This arrangement did not result in a environment that gave encouragement to hari to work hard ,as any wind fall profits that did accrue to the hari for usurped by the Wadera anyway .This meant that Dino got very low yields and his large holding barely provided him with a reasonable living .He ,however , used this arrangement in other ways which did provide him with much more income than the land did .

Nawaz ,unlike Dino ,did not identify with he local population .He did learn the local language but always had a vague sense of superiority and a sense of different-ness that kept him from totally accepting the local ways .His sense of superiority was related more to his working habits as compared to that of the haris .Arshad on the other hand had a marked sense of superiority emanating from his sense of belonging to the ruling mogul class and the association to the supposedly higher culture and language ,Arshad made no attempt to learn the Sindhi as he considered it as inferior .Had he made the attempt he would have realized the beauty in the language and the sufic poetry that was of great beauty and simplicity .He would also have realized that his language –Urdu , was akin to both Dino’s language i.e. Sindhi and to Nawaz’s language –Punjabi .All these three are sister languages, Urdu evolved from Punjabi which itself evolved from Sindhi and Serieki .All of these had more in common with the Tamil languages than with Sanskrit and possibly all or some of these languages still carried words and even the structure of the Harrapan or Mellehuan language of the Harrapan or Mohenjadaroen people .These languages seem to echo the theme of the rift caused ,by the great head butt, between the Indus lands and the Ganges-Jummna lands , as these language do differ from the Sanskrit related Aryan languages .

Allah Dino was unable to buy Arshad’s land because his attention and more importantly his cash flow were attracted by the young ,buxom dancing girl , Shazia from F.B. Area .This for the land was fortuitous because it would have lain desolate and unattended if Dino had managed to scrape together the price of the land demanded by Arshad .Nawaz and his family on the other hand ,with back breaking labor, ,managed to arrange the land and prepare the land like a poor  bride  .They revered the land much like the ancients worshipped the promiscuous goddess who slept with different gods and men and accepted their seeds .The land similarly was prepared to receive various seeds which over time would bloom to full grown plants .This would be a part of natures color scheme .This to Nawaz was more beautiful then a miniature painting from Chughtai or even more than the allures of Shazia .Dino on the other hand looked at the land as his passport to political and social mobility .

Latif the youngest of the brothers was not too infected by the land bug, he found the harsh hot fringe of the desert barely tolerable .He was a young strapping lad with even features. The harsh landscape and lack of any friends did depress Latif , who one morning walking around his land came across Marvi the young daughter of Rusal Bux , one of the Hari of the wadera Allah Dino . Marvi , who had just turned sixteen , felt an uncontrollable attraction for the strapping lad , she had a vague sense of doing something forbidden . They could not talk with each other as both did not understand the others language but they did lock eyes, Latif with unabashed greed and Marvi with a shy indefinable exciting feeling. Their first meeting on the edge of the desert lasted only a few minutes, no words were exchanged but the universal language, did communicate the mutual attraction that both of them felt for each other, although the nature of attraction and expectation of each from the other was widely different. The brief encounter did arouse interest in Latif to learn Marvi’s language. Latif did  imbruse himself whole heartedly towards a crash course of learning to speak Sindhi and surprisingly it did not take long for him to be adequately fluent in the language , which is not surprising as both Sindhi and Punjabi are sister languages .

CPEC and Agriculture

CPEC and Agriculture

Introduction:

CPEC has been called a game changer and has many aspects one of which is the agriculture component. The CPEC plan reveals, thousands of acres of farmland will be leased out to Chinese enterprises in Pakistan.  Chinese enterprises will be allowed access to large tracts of Pakistani farmland, either by lease or purchase. On that land, they will allegedly be permitted to operate their own farms and processing facilities, backed by robust capital grants and loans from Beijing and the Chinese Development Bank. Keeping in view the fact that agriculture sector accounts for around 20 per cent of Pakistan`s GDP and employs over 40pc of the country`s labor force, both Pakistan and China have agreed to enhance cooperation on agriculture under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),

China and Pakistan have an agreement to promote the transition from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture in the regions along the CPEC to effectively boost the development of local agricultural economy and help local people get rid of poverty and become better off, strengthen the up-gradation of agricultural infrastructure, promote the construction of water saving modern agricultural zones, and increase the development and remediation of medium and low-yielding land to achieve efficient use of resources

Due to shortage of arable land and freshwater resources in China, the country needs to import land-extensive crops (such as wheat and rice) to feed its population. Further, with rising living standards, the Chinese demand for agricultural imports is gradually moving up, which is likely to create agro-based trade opportunities in countries having substantial potential in agriculture produce. China`s demand for cotton yarn and rice imports is met by the emerging economies of Asia, such as Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand and India.  

The recent trade war between USA and China will possibly hurt both parties but it does present opportunities to others Chinese imports from the US are mostly agricultural produce. Pakistan is a natural agricultural country. Its climate and hard-working workforce are a blessing for the nation. China faces a decreasing agriculture output per capita since there is a rural to urban migration, economic growth has brought about significant increase in family food budgets, urban wages are significantly higher than rural wages, and the levels of demand are not being met with by domestic sources.

Trade Balance between Pakistan and China:

Trade between Pakistan and China is lopsided. To address this gap the agriculture potential can be utilized .The low volume of trade between Pakistan and China is not reflective of the economic size of two neighboring countries. This indicates there is a huge untapped trade potential in both countries.

China is the world’s largest importer of agricultural products. In 2015, China imported $160 billion worth of agricultural products. However, Pakistan’s share in these exports was minuscule — less than half a percentage point — despite having a large agrarian base and a shared border with China. With a population of 1.3 billion people, China consumes almost $1 trillion worth of food every year. With increased urbanization and rising incomes, Chinese consumption patterns are also changing, and demand for high quality imported food items is growing at a pace much faster than population growth. Therefore, the domestic consumption is expected to grow by another $500 billion in the next 10 years. it takes about one acre of arable land to feed an average US consumer. With present population, China only has about 0.2 acre per citizen, which is going to be far short of future requirements, considering the evolving demand.

China, the world’s largest importer of vegetables, gets 50 of these imports from the US and Brazil. In the world of international trade, shorter distances can provide a strategic advantage through lower transportation costs. But for perishable items like food, such proximity can translate into yet another edge. During transit over long distances, food items face higher risk of spoilage and contamination. Because of this, not only additional cost is incurred for preservation and packaging but often exporters have to make use of extra pesticides to increase shelf-life of food. Pakistan, being China’s neighbor, therefore enjoys a unique advantage and CPEC provides an unprecedented opportunity to capitalize on that.

Initiatives already under way:

Various agricultural projects have been initiated to get maximum benefit of the CPEC initiative, which include: Fruit processing industry in Gilgit-Baltistan: The climate and fertile soil of Gilgit-Baltistan offer ideal environment for producing fruits like apples, peach, cherries, almonds, apricot, etc. According to an article published by the Asian Development Bank, farmers in Gilgit-Baltistan produce over 100,000 tones of fresh apricots a year. Setting up the fruit processing industry in the region would help boost the country`s fruit exports.

Meat production and processing facilities in KP: Setting up of meat production and processing facilities in KP would help increase Pakistan`s meat exports to China, as well as, to Afghanistan and Central Asian market. KP-China Sustainable Donkey Development Program: To increase the donkey population in Pakistan so as to ensure interrupted backward supply for export of live animals and raising income of donkey breeders and traders. 

Under CPEC, efforts are being made to strengthen drip irrigation technology for water efficiency, strengthen cooperation in the fields such as crop farming, livestock breeding, forestry and food growing, and aquatic and fishery, with the highlight on technical exchange and cooperation in the fields of development of comprehensive agricultural production capacity, construction of farmland water conservancy facility and agricultural products circulation facility.

The CPEC Agri sector is also focusing on improving post-harvest handling, storage and transportation of agricultural products and innovates in marketing and sales models, Improve water resources operation and management, strengthen development of pastoral areas and desert, and promote application of remote sensing technology.

The key cooperation areas focus on strengthening production of agriculture inputs particularly pesticides, fertilizer, machinery and support services including agriculture education and research, collaboration in forestry, horticulture, fisheries and livestock medicines and vaccines as well as strengthening production of horticulture products.

Rationale of Intervention:

Pakistan is among the top 10 producers of many crops such as rice, wheat, cotton, sugarcane, milk, meat, mangos, chickpeas, and citrus fruits. But because of a poor economy and lack of modern techniques and technology, it has not been able to exploit its strength in the agriculture sector fully. However, China’s experience in agriculture has been very successful, and the progress it has made in this sector during the past four decades is amazing.

China was facing food shortages just 40 years ago, but with its reforms in the agriculture sector from 1978-84, it successfully turned shortages into surpluses, and began exporting produce to other countries and generating foreign exchange. China pulled around 500 million people out of poverty within just six years of its reforms in the agriculture sector. Chinese scientists, technologists and farmers worked very hard, developed new varieties and new techniques, and the country modernized its farming patterns. Now Chinese agricultural enterprises are mature, experienced and financially strong.

They could enter Pakistan’s huge untapped huge market and make joint ventures with local entrepreneurs to exploit the real potential of Pakistan’s agriculture sector. This would help Pakistan’s economy to take off and would also be a good opportunity for Chinese entrepreneurs to make good profits as well as compensate for any disturbance caused by US export of agricultural produce  

Coordination Efforts:

Sino-Pakistan Hybrid Rice Research Centre at Karachi University: Both countries have recently initiated research to produce high-yielding and high-quality rice. Setting up a rice research centre is a right step towards achieving the objective.

The basmati rice grown in Pakistan’s Punjab province is long and slender-grained. It is aromatic, fluffy when cooked and, in classic Pakistani dishes, pairs well with lentil and gravies made from chickpea flour and spices. At market, it draws double the price, if not more, of non-basmati, long-grain rice varieties.

In recent years, however, basmati revenues have slumped in Pakistan amid low-yield harvests and uneven quality. At the Sino-Pakistan Hybrid Rice Research Center in Karachi, Chinese and Pakistani scientists are working to reverse this trend. Using state-of-the-art genetic technologies, they are developing high-yield, high-quality, and pest-resistant rice varieties, for both domestic sale and export.

The $1.3 million research facility is a harbinger of many changes soon to come to Pakistan’s agriculture sector under the ambitious development scheme known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC  For agriculture, CPEC promises technology transfers, infrastructure upgrades, and extensive cooperation between Chinese and Pakistani farming enterprises.

 A group of Chinese hybrid-rice researchers and experts along with local scientists has visited more than 100 rice farms across the country under the `Travelling Rice Seminar `initiative.
The travelling seminar was designed by Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) and Chinese Yuan Longping High-tech Agriculture Company and aims to boost hybrid rice cultivation in the country.

According to Program Coordinator and Member Plant Science PARC Dr Anjum Ali, the experts also visited research stations, agricultural universities and seed outlets of different companies to exploit the cultivation of hybrid rice. The Chinese experts travelled to Khyber Pakhtunkhawa, Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan in order to create awareness about the cultivation of hybrid rice among growers. ‘This was a month-long activity in which a group of hybrid rice researchers from China comprising 12 scientists trained the local scientists, seed producers and field extension departments of the provincial governments,` he added.

He said the main aim of this joint initiative is to enhance per acre crop productivity, increase profitability and produce surplus commodity for exports enhancement. ‘In order to further enhance the local rice output, China and Pakistan have decided to work together for conducting joint awareness programs to adopt hybrid rice seeds,` he added.

The Chinese scientists trained 30 Pakistani agriculture scientists who were selected from across the country. Dr Ali said the Chinese experts will also impart training to the members of the provincial field extension departments on hybrid rice cultivation. In addition, the activity will also help in capacity building of local experts from all over the country in order to promote hybrid rice techniques.

Road-shows and field visits were organized across rice-growing areas to address issues and challenges faced in promotion of hybrid rice seed, he added. He further said a revolutionary hybrid rice seed has been developed recently by the Chinese researchers, which would help Pakistani farmers to enhance significantly their per acre yield, hence the country would be able to export more rice, he added

Challenges Faced by Pakistan Agriculture:

Firstly, the fertility of soil is decreasing day by day. The thickness of fertile layer of soil in Pakistan is more than 6 inches but the average yield is lower than other countries where layer of fertile soil is only 4 inches; water wastage is very high in our country. The archaic method of flood irrigation is still in practice in whole of the country which wastes almost 50 to 60 percent of water; owing to old methods of cultivation and harvesting, Pakistan has low yield per acre that means the average crop in Pakistan is just 1/4th of that of advance states.  Nepal, India and Bangladesh, are using modern scientific methods to increase their yield per acre. For this purpose, these states are using modern machines to improve their yield; small farmers are increasing in our country as the lands are dividing generation by generation. So, there are large numbers of farmers who own only 4 acres of land. These small farmers do not get credit facilities to purchase seeds, pesticides, fertilizers etc; water logging and salinity is increasing day by day. As the storage capacity of the dams is decreasing so the water availability per acre is also decreasing. Therefore, the farmers are installing more and more tube wells to irrigate their crops. This is why salinity is becoming the major issue in most parts of Punjab and Sindh; focusing more on land, crops and yield problems the man behind the plough is always ignored. While formulating the 5 or 10 years plan, no emphasize has been laid on the importance of solving the problems of farmers. Most of the farmers are illiterate, poor and ignorant.

Infrastructural problems:

 Inadequate rail and road networks are one area of concern.. Pakistan is also facing grain storage problems at large scale throughout the country. The people often store their grains in godowns, which cause time to time damage to the seed. Thus, hundreds of thousands of tones of crops have to be stored in temporary facilities that afforded inadequate protection and pilferage. The hazards may occur because of improper ventilation, lack of control over temperature and humidity, high moisture content in seeds, lack of control over rain due to broken walls, floors and ceilings, spoil and un-cleaned godowns, lack of spray and fumigation etc. That results in increase number of dormant seeds, sprouting and rotting, increase of insect damage and bird contamination.

Cold storages:

All fruits and vegetables require specialized post-harvest treatment, appropriate temperature and relative humidity for their storage. Establishment of cold storage provides refrigerated storage and preservation facilities for different fruits, vegetables as well as flowers. Special licenses are required for food items like milk, meat etc & can be studied in the. Because of technology advancements and logistic strategies, the cold storage of perishable items has become an important stage in the distribution between manufacturers / processors and retail locations. The cold storage will ensure the increased availability and improved quality of high value perishable fruits and vegetables for both export and local sale, which would otherwise perish or deteriorate.

Value added Sector:

Livestock revolution enabled Pakistan to significantly raise agriculture productivity and rural incomes in 1980s. Economic activity in dairy, meat and poultry sectors now accounts for just over 50% of the nation's total agricultural output. The result is that per capita value added to agriculture in Pakistan is almost twice as much as that in Bangladesh and India. Although Pakistan's value added to agriculture is high for its region, it has been essentially flat since mid-1990s. It also lags significantly behind developing countries in other parts of the world. For example, per capita worker productivity in North Africa and the Middle East is more than twice that of Pakistan while in Latin America it is more than three times.

Conclusions

 Agricultural development is one of the seven areas of cooperation under CPEC, wherein China is specifically interested to explore areas like cotton productivity, efficient irrigation and post-harvest infrastructure along the CPEC route, a gateway for enhancing agriculture exports to China. Where infrastructure can undoubtedly serve in allaying the bottlenecks in the agriculture sector, this progression requires economic and political reforms by the government and private sector. The government should consider removing tariff and non-tariff barriers for agricultural trade with China, renegotiating the Pak-China Free Trade Agreement for better returns on its agricultural exports. The private sector and agriculture entrepreneurs should explore viable market opportunities and partnerships in the Chinese market and with international firms. Most importantly, a modern agricultural policy needs to be formulated to work in tandem with CPEC and support the rights of the local farmers.

  The private sector and agri-entrepreneurs should become the trailblazer and start exploring viable market opportunities in the Chinese market and forge partnerships with international firms to get a foothold. The government and private sector should jointly invest in research and development and post-harvest technology to improve product variety and quality. Last, but not the least, value chain expansion should be prioritized. Fruit processing, for instance, can fetch greater value with far simpler SPS requirements and more stable demand.

Update

During Prime Minister Imran Khan`s visit to China, Islamabad and Beijing inked a few initial agreements on agriculture; on the basis of which detailed frameworks of cooperation in the field of crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry will be developed and implemented. Officials say that the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed during Mr Khan`s visit provides the basis for attracting Chinese investment and Chinese technical assistance in all sub-sectors of agriculture.

`From strengthening the seed sector, increasing crop yield, modernising livestock and fisheries and enlarging our forest cover, there is a long list of areas in which Chinese funds and technical cooperation will be coming in,` says a senior official of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.

`Whereas it`s true that we`ll develop detailed frameworks for implementation of the PakistanChina cooperation agreement, it`s wrong to assume that none exists right now. A number of such frameworks are already in place since 2015 when the CPEC master agreement was signed and implementation on them continues,` he said.

Officials, however, are tight lipped about the critical issue of land acquisition in Pakistan by Chinese state-run or private firms for furthering cooperation in agriculture. That was an important feature of the CPEC long term plan.


Chinese companies have already been engaged in development of hybrid paddy and wheat seeds in Pakistan. Sinochem Group Agriculture Division, for example, has been running pilot projects at 200 sites in Pakistan including experimental bases and local farms.

A hybrid rice variety developed and cultivated by a Pakistan rice research and exporting company in collaboration with Yuan Long ping High-Tech Agriculture Co, has already been exported to the Philippines. In the seed manufacturing industry, Syngenta Pakistan is aggressively increasing its market share after China took over the Switzerland-based Syngenta in the middle of 2017, industry officials say. it would be naïve to expect that Chinese investment will start pouring into our agriculture sector automatically,` says a Sindh government official working on the province`s long-term agriculture policy.

`Chinese companies that are already here are all working in active partnership with local companies or federal or provincial institutions. They will continue to take this relationship one-notch further every time they decide to increase their level of cooperation. This effectively means we must prepare ourselves to work with them,` he opined.

Sindh is about to unveil its agriculture policy for 2018-2030 and officials working on it say that similar to Punjab, where Chinese and other foreign companies have been actively engaged in agricultural development, Sindh also wants to seek greater international cooperation. 

About three years ago, the Pakistani and Chinese governments had identified a couple of areas for cooperation in agriculture and China had promised to build agriculture demonstration centres across Pakistan and supply seeds and machinery to Pakistani farmers.

Authorities have so far not shared with the public how many of such demonstration centres have been built and the arrangement under which the Chinese are supplying seeds and agriculture machinery.

According to an MOU signed in this regard in October 2015, Pakistan was to use Chinese capital, technology and experience to improve irrigation, reduce post-harvest losses and enhance water use efficiency.

Officials with background knowledge of agricultural programmes under CPEC say work is progressing on the above-mentioned and several other areas of agriculture development and poverty alleviation. Currently it is difficult to say how much of the Chinese funding we can expect in state grants and loans, and how much through foreign direct investment of Chinese companies,` a federal government official explained.

Some projects like those of farm-to-market road networks that are connected with storage, packaging and processing units, fall under infrastructure development in CPEC wherein long-term state funding can rightly be expected.But both state-run Chinese institutions and companies will be involved in other projects like construction of modern slaughter houses or pulses, tea and oil seeds crop cultivation or deepening of agricultural research programmes