Is the state stifling the cotton belt in Pakistan?

A boy checks raw cotton blooms collected by women cotton pickers, at a collection point in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi September 26, 2014. (REUTERS)
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Updated 06 March 2020
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Is the state stifling the cotton belt in Pakistan?

  • In 2012, Pakistan was the fourth biggest cotton producer in the world
  • Sugar mill owners with political clout had state policy tilted for sugarcane growers over the years, official says

LAHORE: Javed Riaz first took up farming in 1979 to cash in on Pakistan’s cotton boom-- a crop often referred to back then as ‘white gold.’ 

But today, the father of three has reduced his landholdings by half and the long rows of soft white flowers at his farms have been replaced with maize and sugarcane. 

“If a farmer is still planting cotton in Pakistan, he is very brave,” Riaz told Arab News, from his home in Toba Tek Singh in eastern Punjab province.




Women cotton pickers unload cotton blooms plucked from plants to make a bundle in a field in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi September 25, 2014. (Reuters)

Of the four key cash crops in Pakistan – wheat, rice, cotton, and sugarcane — cotton has historically played the most dominant role. Planted largely in the southern belt of Punjab, raw cotton and cotton-related products make up 58 percent of Pakistan’s total exports, larger than any other product in the country. In 2012, Pakistan was the fourth biggest cotton producer in the world.

But in the last decade, Pakistani farmers have turned away from the crop by the hoardes and cotton cultivation since 2012 has been on a steady downward spiral. In 2019, cotton output fell by 23 percent compared to the previous year, according to the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association.




Tulsi, a cotton picker sorts out cotton blooms while sitting on a rope bed in the premises of her home in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi November 23, 2014. 

One reason farmers are cutting back on cotton in the last few years is the unaffordable cost of production and pesticide. But during the same period, there has been a glut of sugarcane in the market. The uneven development, officials admit, is due to a consistent state policy to promote one crop over the other. 

 “No government has ever been interested in cotton,” said a government agriculture researcher, requesting not to be named.

“Every political party in the last few years has had politicians who owned sugar mills. So the state policy has been to encourage farmers to plant sugarcane by offering subsidies,” he said. 




Laali, 11, holds a bloom of cotton plucked from a plant while working with her family in a field in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi September 25, 2014. (Reuters)

Family of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who reigned over the country for three non-consecutive terms, own two sugar factories in the agricultural heartland of Pakistan’s Punjab province.

And presently, the man who steers much of the government’s agriculture policy and chair of the agricultural committee at the center is Jahangir Khan Tareen says a government official, who is also a member of the committee. Tareen is the director of the JDW Group, which according to its website is “Pakistan’s largest” sugar milling operation. 

To save cotton, explained the official who asked not to be named, the agricultural committee headed by Tareen will have to develop a comprehensive policy regarding farming. That, he adds, is not happening at the moment.




A man makes notes while others carry a bundle of cotton blooms attached to a weighing scale in a field in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi September 25, 2014. (Reuters)

The committee meets thrice a month in the capital. Yet, no minutes of the meeting are recorded. No policy drafts are prepared. 

“There is no direction as yet,” the official explained. 

“The federal minister of food security and research, who should be chairing this committee is not interested. The previous minister, Mehboob Sultan, barely came to the meetings. And the new one has nothing to add.” 

In July last year, Mehboob Sultan, then minister of food security and research, told reporters that he had personally requested Tareen to assist the government in planning an agricultural policy. “He [Tareen] is doing this voluntarily,” Sultan had said, “No one in this country knows about the agriculture sector better than him.” 

However, the business magnate and former politician was disqualified by Pakistan’s Supreme Court from holding public office in Dec. 2017. In November, Sultan was also replaced with Khusro Bakhtiar.




A man carries a bundle of cotton blooms on his shoulder, collected by women (unseen) in a field in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi September 25, 2014. (Reuters)

Tareen and Bakhtiar did not reply to Arab News’s request for comments.

“If the trend continues, we expect [cotton] cultivation to further decline by 40 percent this year,” Muhammad Javed Sohail, chairman of the Association, told Arab News.

Agriculture, which employs 43 percent of Pakistan’s population of 210 million and contributes 18.5 percent to the GDP, could be staring at a bleak future. According to the ministry of finance’s Economic Survey of 2018-19, over the last decade, the performance of the agriculture sector “has fallen short of desirable level, mainly because of stagnant productivity of important crops.”

The lopsided attention to sugar can also be judged by the Prime Minister’s Agriculture Emergency Program launched in June 2019, which has set aside a total of Rs. 309 billion for the agriculture sector. Of this, Rs.19.3 billion will go toward increasing the production of wheat, Rs.11.4 billion for rice and almost Rs. 4 billion for sugarcane. Cotton is not on the list.

For cotton grower Javed Riaz, this is astounding. 

“I don’t understand,” he said. “How can they forget cotton?”

On February 25, the prime minister had a special sit-down with ministers and bureaucrats to hammer out a policy for cotton, Dr. Hashim Popalzai, the secretary at the ministry of food security and research told Arab News. “One thing we plan to do immediately is reduce the price of pesticides used to kill the insect, pink bollworm, which damages cotton every year,” he said.

“We also plan to strengthen our cotton-related research facilities with China’s help,” he added. However, no separate budget has been earmarked for the cotton sector as yet.

Researchers say that blindly promoting sugarcane and rice in Pakistan comes with its own set of problems, as both the water-intensive crops deplete the country’s precious groundwater. 

And by snubbing cotton, Pakistan’s government could be headed for a deeper economic crisis. 

In December last year, the chief of Pakistan’s central bank said the GDP growth for 2019 was expected to be 3.5 percent and would be revised due to the lower than expected performance of the agriculture sector, “primarily on account of adverse supply-side shocks to cotton production.”

For Dr. Shafiq Ahmed, country director for Better Cotton Initiative, a global not-for-profit organization, the future of cotton is just as much in doubt as the future of farming in Pakistan. 

Growers, he insists, are turning their backs on agriculture altogether, and farmers are selling off their smallholdings.

“These people are no longer making enough money, so they are selling their lands to housing societies in Punjab,” he told Arab News. Neither is the younger generation interested in the laborious working hours of farming, he added. 

“If you ask me, I fear that small farmers will not be able to survive. Tomorrow they might be working in the same farms they once owned.”


Pakistan’s defense minister reports ‘death threat’ to British police, received during subway ride

Updated 14 November 2024
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Pakistan’s defense minister reports ‘death threat’ to British police, received during subway ride

  • Individuals who heckled Khawaja Asif recorded a video, warning he could be stabbed with a knife
  • Pakistani ministers have also complained of harassment by Imran Khan’s followers in the past

ISLAMABAD: Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has lodged a report with the British police over the alleged death threat and abuses hurled at him during a train ride in London, the Pakistan High Commission in the United Kingdom said on Thursday.
A viral video surfaced on social media a day earlier, showing an unidentified man hurling abuses at the Pakistani minister in the native Punjabi language, saying, “Take him away before someone stabs him with a knife.”
While Asif chose to ignore the incident and got off the next stop, he visited the Pakistan High Commission on Thursday to formally report the “death threat” to the UK police and demanding an investigation.
“Khawaja Muhammad Asif lodged a report of the train incident with the local police at the Pakistan High Commission,” said a statement released by the Pakistani diplomatic facility. “He informed the police about the details of the knife threat and harassment incident on the train.”
The incident that took place on the Elizabeth Line is now being investigated by the London Transport police, it added.
“I am on a private visit to London,” Asif was quoted as saying. “I was going to Reading via the Elizabeth Line with a loved one.”
He added that a family of three to four persons “harassed and threatened to kill with a knife and used abusive language” against him while making the video.
“I do not know anyone involved in the incident,” the Pakistan High Commission quoted him as saying. “London Transport Police should use CCTV footage to track down the suspects.”
Asif further said death threats and harassment were a “source of shame” for 1.7 million Pakistanis residing in the UK apart from British citizens.
This is not the first time Pakistani ministers belonging to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government, led by the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz party, have been heckled or harassed in the UK.
In the past, Pakistan Information Minister Ataullah Tarar and Punjab Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb have endured the same treatment allegedly by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party supporters of jailed former PM Imran Khan.
 


Seven killed in Pakistan’s northwest as militant’s car bomb explodes accidentally

Updated 14 November 2024
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Seven killed in Pakistan’s northwest as militant’s car bomb explodes accidentally

  • The explosion took place in Mir Ali where a militant was fitting a bomb in a car at his residence
  • Blast damaged several nearby homes and wounded 14 people, with some in critical condition

PESHAWAR: A powerful car bomb accidentally detonated at the house of a Pakistani Taliban militant in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least two children and five suspected militants, police said.
The explosion took place before dawn in the city of Mir Ali in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when a man identified a local commander of the militants, Rasool Jan, was fitting a bomb in a car at his house, police official Irfan Khan said.
He said other militants from the Pakistani Taliban group quickly arrived at the scene and removed the bodies of the insurgents who died. Authorities later found the bodies of two children in the rubble of the house, which collapsed in the explosion.
The blast also badly damaged several nearby homes and wounded 14 people, including women. Some of the injured were in critical condition in a hospital, Khan said, but he did not provide details.
The Pakistani Taliban and other insurgents in the region often target security forces with assault rifles, rockets, grenades and suicide car bombings, and Khan said it appeared the car bomb was being prepared for such an attack.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, are separate from the Afghan Taliban but have been emboldened by the group’s takeover of Afghanistan in 2021.
Also Thursday, security forces raided a hideout of insurgents in Harnai, a district in restive southwestern Balochistan province, triggering an intense shootout in which a soldier and three insurgents were killed. During the operation, an army major was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near his vehicle, the military said in a statement.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif paid tribute to whom they called the “martyred soldiers” in separate statements. They said the fight against terrorism will continue until the elimination of all insurgents.
 


Pakistan, Russia call for regional collaboration on Afghanistan amid shared security concerns

Updated 14 November 2024
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Pakistan, Russia call for regional collaboration on Afghanistan amid shared security concerns

  • The call comes as Moscow’s special representative for Afghanistan visits Pakistan for a day
  • Despite security issues, Afghanistan’s neighboring states view its stability as vital for progress

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Russia on Thursday called for greater collaboration among regional states to address the situation in Afghanistan, amid shared concerns over militant violence emanating from the war-torn country.
The call came during a visit by Moscow’s special representative for Afghanistan, Ambassador Zamir Kabulov, who met with Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Amna Baloch, and held detailed discussions with the additional secretary, Ahmad Naseem Warraich, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad.
“The two sides exchanged views on relations with Afghanistan and called for enhanced coordination among regional countries for a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan,” the foreign office said. “The two sides agreed to remain engaged toward this end.”
The talks come as both nations grapple with security threats linked to Afghanistan. Russia has voiced alarm over Daesh and its attacks, including a concert bombing in Moscow earlier this year that was linked to militants with ties to Afghanistan.
While the Afghan Taliban and Daesh are sworn enemies, Pakistan accuses the Afghan administration of facilitating the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a proscribed militant network blamed for cross-border attacks, an allegation Kabul denies.
Pakistan’s approach to Afghanistan has grown increasingly confrontational since last year as it pressures Kabul to rein in the TTP. By contrast, Russia announced last month it would remove the Taliban from its list of terrorist organizations, signaling a step toward normalizing ties with Afghanistan’s rulers.
Beyond security, Russia is keen to retain its influence in Central Asia and engage in Afghanistan’s economic reconstruction, particularly in energy and infrastructure projects.
Initiatives such as the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) Gas Pipeline and the Trans-Afghan Railway remain key priorities for Moscow, though persistent security challenges have delayed progress.
For Pakistan also, Afghanistan is critical for regional connectivity. Islamabad has offered landlocked Central Asian nations access to its ports, aiming to facilitate trade with global markets via sea routes.
Despite security concerns shared by Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, its stability is viewed as vital to unlocking the economic potential of regional projects.
 


PM Sharif urges nation to perform rain prayers as toxic smog chokes Pakistani cities

Updated 14 November 2024
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PM Sharif urges nation to perform rain prayers as toxic smog chokes Pakistani cities

  • Shehbaz Sharif urges Islamic scholars to play their role in organizing ‘Istisqa’ prayers across the country
  • Toxic smog has enveloped Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore, and 17 other districts of Punjab province

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has urged the nation to perform prayers for rainfall, calling on Islamic scholars to take the lead in organizing “Istisqa” prayers, his office announced on Thursday, as worsening air quality continues to endanger the health of millions.
The Istisqa prayer is a special Islamic ritual performed to seek rain, primarily during times of drought or severe water shortages. It symbolizes the community’s humility, repentance and reliance on divine mercy for sustenance.
Toxic smog has enveloped Pakistan’s cultural capital, Lahore, and 17 other districts in Punjab since last month. Health officials report that more than 40,000 people have sought treatment for respiratory illnesses, prompting Punjab authorities to close schools until November 17 to safeguard children’s health.
“PM Sharif appeals to the nation to offer Istisqa prayers for rain,” his office announced in a statement. “Scholars should especially play their role in organizing Istisqa prayers.”
The prime minister noted the rainfall would improve the environment apart from aiding in getting rid of diseases.
“Istisqa prayers should be organized in all mosques under the auspices of the federal government and the provinces,” he was quoted as saying. “In the current situation, there is a dire need for rain.”
A day earlier, Pakistan’s Meteorological Department forecast light rains from Nov. 14-16 in most districts of the country’s populous Punjab province.
The UN children’s agency has warned that the health of 11 million children in Punjab is in danger due to air pollution.
South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan, gets shrouded in intense pollution every winter as cold air traps emissions, dust, and smoke from farm fires.
Pollution could cut more than five years from people’s life expectancy in the region, according to a University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute study last year.
 


Pakistan signs four-year pact with Global Green Growth Initiative to boost climate resilience

Updated 14 November 2024
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Pakistan signs four-year pact with Global Green Growth Initiative to boost climate resilience

  • The agreement will help Pakistan’s transition to a green economy, address water scarcity and deforestation
  • Pakistan has ranked as the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change, with its cities engulfed in smog

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has signed a four-year country program framework agreement with an international green economy organization to advance its sustainable development goals by enhancing climate resilience through green growth initiatives, according to an official statement released on Thursday.
The agreement was signed by Pakistan’s Climate Change Ministry Secretary, Aisha Humera Moriani, and the Global Green Growth Initiative’s (GGGI) Deputy Director-General, Helena McLeod, during a formal ceremony at the United Nations-led Global Climate Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Pakistan ranks as the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change, according to the Global Climate Risk Index. In 2022, catastrophic floods claimed over 1,700 lives, affected more than 33 million people, and caused economic losses exceeding $30 billion.
While international donors pledged over $9 billion last January to help Pakistan recover from the devastating floods, officials report that little of the pledged amount has been disbursed so far.
“The Ministry of Climate Change & Environmental Coordination and GGGI has signed a four-year Country Programme Framework agreement to advance Pakistan’s sustainable development goals through targeted climate action and green growth interventions,” said the official statement.
On the occasion, McLeod said her organization aimed to facilitate Pakistan’s transition to a green economy through collaboration with national stakeholders to address water scarcity, deforestation and energy challenges “compounded by climate change effects.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Coordinator on Climate Change Romina Khurshid Alam thanked the GGGI for engaging with Pakistan to “mobilize green finance, support climate action frameworks and promote investment” to achieve climate resilience.
Pakistan also regularly faces other climate change-induced effects such as droughts, cyclones, torrential rainstorms and heatwaves.
Currently, record-high air pollution levels have triggered hundreds of hospitalizations, school closures and stay-at-home orders in the eastern city of Lahore and other cities in the populous Punjab province, which has been enveloped in thick, toxic smog since last month.
A mix of low-grade fuel emissions from factories and vehicles, exacerbated by agricultural stubble burning, blanket Lahore and its surroundings each winter, trapped by cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds.
The city of 14 million people stuffed with factories on the border with India regularly ranks among the world’s most polluted cities, but it has hit record levels this month, as has New Delhi.