Concern raised over land grabbing, corporate farming
Across Pakistan's countryside, an aggressive drive for 'corporate farming' is pushing long settled peasant families off the land they have tilled for decades. Under the Green Pakistan Initiative, the state has already marked 4.8 million acres for private investors; nearly 900,000 acres have been leased out, backed by police deployments and debt recovery notices designed to terrorise farmers into surrender.
At the once barren but now fertile Muhammad Nagar Seed Farm (Arifwala) alone, officials are trying to hand 27,000 acres to corporations — despite a century of peasant labour that made the soil productive. Similar assaults are under way at Rakh Ghulama Farm (Bhakkar), Ahsanpur Farm (Kot Addu) and other peasant farms in Punjab, while the same pattern of land grabbing is emerging in Sindh and other regions of Pakistan, said the representatives of the above mentioned organizations.
The press conference was addressed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Junior, Dr Ammar Ali Jan (General Secretary, HKP) and Mehr Ghulam Abbas (President, AMP), who collectively condemned government policies that enable private companies and investors — often backed by security forces — to seize agricultural land.
'We reject this model of corporate land capture being promoted in the name of 'development' and the Green Pakistan Initiative,' said Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Junior. 'It is nothing but a land grabbing that threatens the livelihoods, dignity and food sovereignty of millions of rural families.'
Dr Ammar Ali Jan added, 'This system is designed to serve capitalist elite, not the people. The government is using force, bogus notices and fabricated arrears to evict those who turned barren land fertile through generations of hard work.'
Mehr Ghulam Abbas stated, 'In Muhammad Nagar, Arifwala and other seed farms, peasants face police threats and eviction orders. We are resisting - and we will continue to resist. These lands are ours and we will not surrender.'
The organisations demanded an immediate halt to all corporate farming leases, withdrawal of police from contested farms, cancellation of fabricated debt notices, dissolution of coercive 'public private partnerships' on agricultural land, and revival of the Punjab Peasant Committee with genuine farmer representation.
They called on Parliament to draft a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty Act that enshrines peasant rights, guarantees gender equal land ownership, sets living wages for farm labour and places food for people above export profits.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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