Under the PKMT Jazba Farmers’ Cooperative, farmers from all over Pakistan have started agroecological farms. They have sown the traditional seeds and make organic compost. As time passes the farmers from Sindh and Punjab are now sampling the crops and started harvesting and thrashing.
The farmers from Shikarpur, Ghotki Tando M Khan (Sind) and Multan (Punjab) are busy working in the fields.
Press Release:
Day of the Landless 2020, March 29, 2020
Roots for Equity and Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) join hand with Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) and Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP) to mark the Day of the Landless March 29, 2020.
Today, we commemorate the Day of the Landless with utmost concern as the landless rural people are among the most vulnerable to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The landless peasants along with who are also the small farmers with precarious land ownership or control are forced to work in a variety of oppressive conditions on lands under feudal ownership. Women agricultural are particularly work under the double tier of exploitation at the hands of the landlord as well as patriarchy. Along with this, capitalist agriculture through its mega-corporations has captured agricultural production and markets resulting in a huge increase in the percentages of the landless. More and more, the landless are forced to work in the informal sector on daily wages in a variety of situations. Together with the rest of ordinary toiling people, they bear the brunt of the raging public health crisis of COVID-19 that has paralyzed almost all economic activities and pushed them to further food insecurity and poverty.
With many countries implementing sweeping lockdowns and quarantines often with 
vague operational guidelines, to contain the spread of COVID-19, the agriculture and food supply chain faces great disruption with an escalating price-hike already sending food prices to very high levels. Livelihoods in jeopardy the small producers and poor consumers are suffering the major brunt of the lockdown. In addition, with a total ban on inter and intra provincial travel, agriculture workers and other daily wage earners have no means of finding work. It is feared that the COVID-19 may be used as a cover-up to further harass, and dislocate farming communities as part of evictions under land grabbing for corporate interests.
Furthermore, public health systems, eroded by decades of neoliberal assault such
as privatization, commercialization and budget cuts, are already weak in general and are susceptible to collapse when pandemics strike. In Pakistan, the health care budget has never exceeded 3% of the total budget allocations. Hence, the situation has magnified a hundredfold for rural communities especially the landless.
We support and reiterate the immediate demands of the landless and all toiling peoples amid the pandemic –
Amidst the spreading darkness and misery due to a pandemic caused by more than anything else an ecologically and socially destructive mode of capitalist production, the movement of landless rural people and their supporters, together with all oppressed and exploited toiling peoples, shall remain among the bearers of light and hope.
Released by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) & Roots for Equity
PKMT Jazba Farmers’ Cooperative organized an awareness session program based on the Agroecology farming and sustainable agriculture on village level at different districts of Sindh, Punjab and KP. In Sindh district Tando Mohammad Khan, Shikarpur and Ghotki, in Punjab district Multan and in KP district Haripur and Lower Dir the session were organized.
The session begins with the introduction of the team and the farmers. The team asks different questions from the farmers like who cultivate the land and which sort of cultivation is going on nowadays?
The participants replied that nowadays, we are using artificial means of production, which had chemicals in it, and we use chemical fertilizer in cultivation. Different topics of production and consumption were discussed with the help of pictures.
Unhealthy Production: The participants were told about the unhealthy food production that how modern machinery and chemicals are introduced to increase the production for example, breeding of cows by using artificial means, increasing of milk and meat of animals, increasing chemical spray, fertilizer, use of hybrid seeds and genetically modified seeds. The participants agree that they use the chemicals and machinery which results increase in diseases and unemployment.
Unhealthy Consumption: The participants were told about the unhealthy food like big companies use artificial methods in the preparation of food and are enforced on us for example, Potato chips, burgers, pizzas and unbalanced diet. The participants said that the junk food made by the companies has no energy, the threat of diseases increases and the food is also expensive. Capitalism increases class system. The rich influence on poor just because of this system. The working class is deprived of basic needs of life like food and health; we should not use these things.
Healthy Production: The participants were shown opposite mechanical and artificial method of production. The natural and traditional ways of farming, which includes milking, traditional way of cultivating pure and healthy food. According to our history, we use traditional seeds and eat pure food and live in a clean environment for centuries. The capitalists now capture the markets enforced farmers and labors into poverty.
Healthy Consumption: The participants said that the food from companies are unhealthy, the bread, Saag (local spinach), Lassi, butter, pure ghee are healthy foods. We should promote our own things, which we get through natural means.
Poverty and hunger! Why ? The adopting of chemical methods and an increase in production, the participants said that hunger, poverty and unemployment is increasing day by day. Continue reading
Under the base of PKMT Jazba farmers cooperative there are four Agro ecological farms which tend by women. A woman’s presence led farms are entirely new experience and will be a model for rural women empowerment. Farmers are having meetings and preparing green compost for their crops.
Preparation of green compost in Multan, Punjab
A woman gathering dead leaves of trees for making compost
Sindh Jazba cooperative farmers having meeting in Shikarpur, Sindh after a visit to farmers while making green compost
Under PKMT Farmers’ Cooperative Jazba there are 12 agroecological farms in three provinces, Sindh, KPK and Punjab. Each farm is on one acre of land. Six farms are in Sindh, four farms are in KPK and two are in Punjab. Out of these twelve farms, women farmers manage four.
During our visits to the Jazba farms we carried out interviews with different farmers. The farmers provided details on preparation of land and the varieties of traditional seeds they have sown. They also described green compost preparation that they are carrying out on their land so that will be applied on their land. The farmers were also preparing the natural pesticide, which they will use if needed.
To prepare natural fertilizer (green compost) we have put rotten vegetables as well as peel from vegetables collected from our home use and animal manure. It will be ready in two months, but will look open the pit again after 10 to 15 days. Bakhtiar said that “I believe in natural traditional farming and have practiced it from a long time.”
He has willingly contributed one acre of his land toward the Jazba cooperative. In his one acre of land he has sown two kinds of traditional seeds, namely, Haripur white wheat (which was obtained from a farmer in Haripur about 9-10 years ago) and Ratti (which is a red colored seed indigenous to Dera Ismail Khan, Punjab). He added that he is also making natural spray for pesticides from urine of cow as an experiment.
According to him, he has turned to sustainable way of cultivation so that he can grow healthy seed. He feels that production may be low, but it will be healthy. Secondly, expenses will be reduced and yield pure seed. Ali Gul added that we will be able to eat this grain, save it as well distribute it to other farmers. His message was “Desi beech ugao . . . companeo ko bhagao” (sow traditional seeds and drive out companies).
Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) has established a Farmers Cooperative and named it Jazba. Jazba has enlisted various farmers to further agro ecology-based farms in seven districts spread over three provinces of Pakistan with the collaboration between various actors, that include mass-based farmers’ organizations, non-government organizations, academia and consumer groups.
Jazba aims to upscale and strengthen agro ecology and to build technical and social alliance between various actors such as farmers movements, trade unions, women’s groups, scientists and consumers to advocate for agro ecology and food sovereignty and to bring out the strength of agroecology as a science, as a movement and as a practice, especially in face of corporate hegemony, which is detrimental to farmers self-sufficiency, health and environment.
No doubt the collaboration is more of a political response to the threats being faced by society at large, but most importantly the marginalized especially landless and small farmers, women farmers and general public.The collaboration is also helping in linking farmers with consumer markets as well.
A foundation stone of Jazba is to promote safe, nutritious and healthy food for all. The extensive use of chemicals in corporate farming based on use of hybrid and genetically modified seeds, toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers has severely impacted the health of all living things as well has been a cause for massive destruction of biodiversity.
Of the 12 agro ecological farms, six are in Sindh,two in Punjab and four in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Every farm consists of one acre of land. Four of the 12 agro ecology farm, four are managed by women. Presence of women-led farms is an entirely new experience and will be a model for rural women’s empowerment.
Each farmer has only used natural fertilizers from animal dung and green compost. Six farmers have already initiated making compost on the land; the other five are preparing land but has been postponed due to rains in December 2019 and January 2020. Formal initiation of the 12 farms was initiated with wheat sowing season.An initial training for preparing biological pesticides was given early in the project.
PKMT and its partners will launch a campaign to create greater awareness of agro ecological practices, its economic and social benefits and to motivate other farmers and groups to engage in agroecology.
Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) held its 12th Annual Conference 28, December, 2019 in Jampur, Rajanpur. The theme of the conference was “Corporate Agriculture: Decent Livelihood, Pure Nutritious Food and Environmental Justice Impossible!”
The Annual conference started with the registration of the members from various districts of the country.
The 12th PKMT General Assembly was kicked off with welcome remarks from the Punjab provincial coordinator Maqsood Ahmed, Rajanpur district coordinator Abdul Ghafaar. A one minute silence was observed in memory of Ghulam Yaseen, PKMT member who had passed away earlier this year.
The program began with a theatre performance from the PKMT group “PUKKUK”.
Key Notes were delivered by Azra Talat Sayeed, followed by two different sessions focusing on the debacle of corporate agriculture, its impacts on farmers’ livelihood, climate crisis and decreasing access to safe nutritious food. Guest speaker was a trade unionist Mr Junaid Awan, Railway Workers Union.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial coordinator Mr Fayaz Ahmed provided a detailed run down on PKMT’s activities for 2019.
An award giving ceremony was conducted for farmers practicing Sustainable Agriculture. The two farmers who received the PKMT PaidarZarat Award were Mr Bakhtayar Zeb, Lower Dir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Mr Ali Gohar, Gohar, Sindh. Both were chosen for receiving the award based on a criteria set by the PKMT National Seed Committee.
A session by the name of “Bol K Lab Azad Hain Tere” provided space for issues raised by famers across the country.
A vote of thanks was delivered by the Sindh provincial coordinator followed by the PKMT tarana sung by the members.
26/03/2019
Part one of a two-part features series on the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) in commemoration of the Day of the Landless on 29 March.
“Further consolidate the Asian peasants” was the theme of APC’s 5th General Assembly held in Surat Thani province, Thailand in October 2018. (Photo: PANAP)
Perhaps there is no greater irony in the 21st century than the fact of landlessness that millions of peasants grapple with in the face of a global land rush — the large-scale acquisition, lease, or concession of lands in corporations’ bid to seek resources most profitable in the global markets.
The resulting dispossession of farmer communities seems but an afterthought when, in reality, it is an affront to the industry and dignity of the very people who feed the rest of the world with food that they themselves often cannot afford to eat. Few countries illustrate the magnitude of the problem better than those in Asia, where rural unrest is set against the backdrop of poverty and political instability. It is in this context that the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC) was formed.
Now in its 15th year, the APC continues to unite landless peasants, farmers, farm workers, food producers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, herders and pastoralists in Asia. More than 15 million members commit to consolidating gains on the ground to defy all forms of peasant oppression.
It is the role of peasant movements like the APC to step in where governments fall short, where ruptures for social change can come forth. No shortcut can be taken to help the peasantry climb out of the ditch decades of subjugation has plunged it into, but the APC’s aims are nowhere near impossible: to assert the right to land in the pursuit of genuine agrarian reform, to sever the ties between states and transnational monopolies, and to upset the dominion of imperialist powers.
Farm labor and feudal lordship
In many Asian countries, to say “land is life” is to speak not just of a matra but of a fundamental reality. Loss of land might as well be a death sentence to farmer families, indeed, as it entails loss of livelihood, security, and food. The estimated 15 million members people living in rural areas in Asia are bound to land, and it is upon their backs that the region imparted 49.8% of global agricultural value in 2013, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.
But while Asia boasts of vast tracts of agricultural lands, much of which, however, are worked by farmers and farm workers who own but smallholdings, if at all. Among the foremost campaigns of the APC has been to intensify the struggle against land and resource grabbing and all forms of exploitation that remain rooted in the monopoly of a small fraction of local landowners.
Centuries of colonial experience of Asian nations like the Philippines and India have entrenched such feudal arrangements in agricultural production. The APC, since its inception, has helped peasant organizations decry tenurial relationships that perpetuate bonded labor as payoff for land rents, debts, and threats of displacement that landless farmers find themselves worrying.
At its first general assembly in Dhaka, Bangladesh in November 2004, all member organizations recognized the tragedy in how more and more Asian people got mired deeper in landlessness, poverty, and hunger while doing all the work under unconscionably exploitative conditions at the behest of compradors and big landlords.
Almost 15 years later, current APC chairperson Poguri Chennaiah of the peasant group Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union (APVVU) in India would echo this sentiment at the APC’s fifth general assembly in Surat Thani province, Thailand in October 2018. While he recognized the victories on the ground — particularly the land occupation activities by a growing number of farmers of late — it still cannot be denied, Chennaiah said, that the majority of those suffering from malnutrition in the world come from Asia, the bread basket for all but its own peasantry.
With the scale of landlessness and land grabbing accelerating at an alarming rate over the past decade, the APC has tried to outmatch this injustice in its vow to intensify the fight for genuine agrarian reform founded on the principle of “land to the tiller.”
Yet expropriation of land is a problem that tenants face not only against usurious and abusive landholders but also against governments that offer little to no avenues for redress. Semi-feudal structures are no longer just shored up by a local elite but also by prevailing systems of law and governance that aggravate land insecurity. The state is as much to blame for its complicity, from inutile intervention in land conflicts to outright harassment or criminalization of peasant leaders.
Tens of thousands of debt-laden Indian farmers descended on New Delhi to demand from the administration a one-time loan waiver in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, November 30, 2018. Poguri Chennaiah, chairperson of the Asian Peasant Coalition (APC), cited recent massive mobilizations in India as proof of the peasant movement’s resounding calls for the government to take action. (Photo: AP)
Authorities and autocrats
The APC has never wavered in calling out governments that sponsor all but the welfare of the peasant sector. It has also unabashedly professed its progressive stance, as in its first general program of action in 2004 which states its campaign to “resist the maneuver, betrayal, and divisive character of local regimes against the farmers.”
This objective is far from lip service. The coalition, for one, has supported mass demonstrations of peasants against policies typically hoisted under the banner of ‘development.’ “But is it the development for the people who have been depending on natural resources?” said Chennaiah. “Or is it for the small percentage of the people who are plundering what meager resources have been vested in the communities?”
Development projects are so called only from the vantage point of a private sector that receives concessions from government offices paralyzed by patronage, corruption, and profit seeking.
In Bangladesh, for example, the government has allowed much of the arable land it once vowed to distribute to landless peasants to be turned into residential and infrastructure developments or export processing zones. In Cambodia, while public lands attractive for tourism get privatized, the authorities tasked to resolve land disputes perform overlapping administrative functions and get embroiled in red tape. Indonesian mining laws, meanwhile, grant the state blanket power to encroach on indigenous peoples’ land to pave the way for operations of mining concessionaires.
Local farmers also rarely rely on the courts. The recent decision of the top court in India to reject the ancient ownership claims of over a million forest dwellers has not only triggered a series of protests but also evinced the anti-people bent of most legal instrumentalities.
Chennaiah remains hopeful, however, that public pressure would halt the eviction order, just as it did when tens of thousands of environmental defenders and subsistence farmers protested and forced the World Bank to withdraw its funding for the Sardar Sarovar dam in 1993, which would have displaced more than 140,000 villagers.
“The people’s resistance has been strong enough,” said Chennaiah, “to remind [the government] that its role is not to work as a broker for the corporate world but that it has responsibilities to the people of its country.”
Legal frameworks that facilitate land grabs and worsen peasant troubles could even take on more malevolent, blatant forms. From January 2017 to March 2019, PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) has monitored through online news and reports from its partners a total of 101 cases of arrests, detention, and legal persecution worldwide, not to mention the 159 politically motivated killings related to land conflicts and struggles.
The deadliest country for farmers and land rights activists, the Philippines proves an interesting case study for the increasingly authoritarian tendencies in Asia, which the APC has identified as an emergent concern. Besides extrajudicial killings in the countryside, members of progressive groups and peasant activists are tagged as insurgents and suffer at the hands of alleged paramilitaries or state forces. Leaders like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte are resorting to more than just incendiary rhetoric to muzzle with impunity the clamor against state-backed seizure of lands.
It would be short-sighted, however, to divorce the rise of authoritarian rule from the failure of the string of policies of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation that have set the stage for it to begin with. The APC recognizes that the plunder of Asian resources are indeed symptomatic of the expansionist takeover of international markets and of more dominant Western economies.
Collaterals and collusions
While land and resource grabbing is inherent in capitalism, it has become one of the linchpins of neoliberalism — the global order for the past four decades that has privileged big businesses over basic social services, tax cuts for the rich over decent wages for the working class, and, in agriculture, profit-oriented models over sustainable farming and equitable land distribution.
The impetus for global land grabs originates chiefly from the appetite of the United States and Europe for fuel, food, and warehouses in which to foist off their detritus and surplus. From this supply chain, the Global South stints on scraps in the form of foreign direct investments. In recent years, the rise of China as a new global power is also fueling greater conflict over land and resources, particularly under its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that so far spans 65 countries worldwide.
“Corporate plunder has been intensified along with globalization,” said Chennaiah. “We at the APC believe that no isolated country-level struggle can defeat these forces globally.”
The coalition continues to denounce the hand of multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in wrecking local economies to the detriment of vulnerable groups like the peasants. In October 2018, former APC Chairperson Rafael Mariano talked at the coalition’s general assembly about the double burden of financial instruments like speculative funds and bonds that these institutions bank on to drive prices up.
Moreover, the public-private partnerships (PPPs) Asian governments foster with multinational lenders rest on an uneven ground. Funds for some conditional cash transfer (CCT) schemes, for example, partly come from loans from the WB and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
“The CCT in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and other parts of the world is actually a doleout program that merely exacerbates each country’s debt,” said Rahmat Ajiguna, chairperson of Indonesian peasant group Aliansi Gerakan Reforma Agraria (AGRA) in an APC statement on World Food Day in 2015. Currently the Internal Vice Chairperson of the APC, Ajiguna described the onerous policy conditions tied to these loans as ultimately damaging to food sovereignty of the borrowing, underdeveloped countries.
Recently, loans have been pouring in not only from the West but also from Asia’s richest nation China, which is now gaining muscle to rival the economic heft and military might of the US. It has cashed in on the collapse of trade barriers. Its BRI has been afoot and ensnared countries like Sri Lanka in debt bondage. Its neighbors Laos and Myanmar have had farmer families displaced to make way for Chinese-funded rails and dams.
As China continues its ascent and starts to harbor its own imperial desires, a great majority of Asian countries remains in the throes of rural backwardness. Such stagnation is telling of economies hitched to corporate and colonial/neocolonial structures of control. This comes at the expense of those at the bottom, whose resistance nonetheless remains alive.
This resolve and energy of the poor and landless to persevere in reclaiming their rights fuel the APC’s campaign for a more united front of peasants in the region. For too long, they have been paying the price for agrarian programs gone amiss and promises of relief still unrealized. When measured against the costs, their decision to rise up promises a better shot at a life with dignity.
Power to the Peasants: Reclaiming lands, reclaiming the future
March 01, 2019
Zubeida Mustafa
THERE is bad news and there is good news for our environmentalists, agriculturalists, healthcare givers and all those who care for the welfare of Pakistan. First, the bad news.
In January, the Prime Minister’s Office announced that Cargill, the global food and agricultural producer with an annual revenue of $114.6 billion (2018), will be investing $200 million in Pakistan in the next two to five years. This announcement came after two top-ranking executives of Cargill met Prime Minister Imran Khan. It seemed innocuous, at least to people who know little about biotechnology giants.
One of them, Monsanto (now merged with Bayer), fathered the genetically modified organism (GMO) in 1983 which did terrible damage to numerous crops and farmers all over the world. As a result, we saw a spate of high-profile lawsuits in which the company admitted to having bribed officials abroad. At least 35 countries have now banned GMOs.
Obviously our political leadership is not well informed on such matters, nor is transparency its forte. Hence the Cargill heads’ meeting with the prime minister and their offer to create a huge number of jobs in Pakistan raised no scepticism in government circles.
Our experience with GM cotton has been disastrous.
But mercifully the Ministry of National Food Security & Research still has men of integrity and knowledge at its helm. It appears they have resisted this move. That has now prompted the American Business Council of Pakistan (representing 64 companies), a leading foreign investors’ group, to seek the prime minister’s help “to allow commercial cultivation of GM maize”. These American companies want the “obstacles” removed that are preventing them from implementing their controversial plans.
The good news is that the Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek has issued a press release titled ‘Peasants Declare “NO TO GM MAIZE!”’ The party has categorically supported the ministry’s refusal to grant approval to genetically modified maize in Pakistan. The PKMT’s own position on GMOs and the seed companies has been clear for over a decade: they violate farmers’ collective rights to seed and will pauperise the small and landless tillers of the soil.
The Seed Association of Pakistan has also “sternly opposed” any commercialisation of GM maize in Pakistan. Civil society is also gearing up to resist any such move which will have a devastating effect on food security as well as agriculture. BT cotton should come as a lesson — that is, if we are willing to learn. Introducing BT cotton proved to be easy sailing in 2010. There was hardly any resistance from those in authority.
The Seed Law was changed by the National Assembly in 2015 to accommodate the seed multinationals. This was done at the behest of the US in spite of the fact that the 18th Amendment was in place and a courageous lawyer, Ahmad Rafay Alam, went to court on behalf of the Kissan Board to challenge its legality as well as the safety of BT cotton. The case has still to be decided.
BT cotton — Monsanto’s GM pet project — has proved to be a disaster for the country. Since its debut in Pakistan — by virtue of seeds smuggled from India in 2005 and later sanctioned by the government in 2010, cotton production has been falling. The figures cited have varied from source to source. It has of late been in the range of 10.5m and 11.5m bales. In 2004, cotton production stood at a record high of 14.1m bales (of 170kg each). Contrary to the government’s claim, the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association says the weight of the bales is now 160kg each.
For years cotton production has failed to meet the target set by the government. This has adversely affected the national economy as cotton is the major element in the textile sector, the mainstay of Pakistan’s exports. BT cotton has also introduced new bugs in the cotton fields requiring greater use of pesticides, produced as can be expected by the biotech companies themselves. With Monsanto monopolising the seed market, nearly 88pc of the area under cotton cultivation is BT. The yield per acre has also fallen. All this adds to the cost of the inputs, causing farmers to switch to other crops.
It is horrifying to think of what the impact would be if maize, which is a thriving crop at present, is handed over to producers of GM maize. Has GM maize been thoroughly tested in our soil and climatic conditions? Without extensive research we cannot assess its impact on human health. We cannot afford to risk a rise in the prevalence of deadly diseases; the pesticide Roundup, which is required to be used, has been declared carcinogenic by WHO. This should be reason enough for the government to resist pressures from the biotech multinationals which are out to destroy our economy.
Let us learn from our own sordid experience of GMO cotton. Let sanity prevail. Besides, we cannot allow our peasantry to be destroyed. It is the backbone of our agriculture.
Published in Dawn, March 1st, 2019
Press Release
Lahore, 21 February 2019: A Full Bench of the Lahore High Court heard arguments by Petitioners challenging the Seed (Amendment) Act, 2015 and the Plant Breeder’s Rights Act, 2016.
Advocate Sheraz Zaka, appearing on behalf of the NGO One-World, submitted that these laws were passed at the behest of multinational seed and GMO companies and were against the interests of farmers in Pakistan. He pointed out how these law prohibit the storage and sharing of seeds, which has been a fundamental feature of agriculture since the dawn of civilization. The new laws would require farmers and seed companies to register new verities with the Intellectual Property Organization in Islamabad.
Advocate Ahmad Rafay Alam appearing for NGO Sojhla for Social Change argued the Plant Breeder’s Rights Act, 2016 could not have been passed by Parliament as it was a provincial subject. He pointed out the province of Punjab had taken measures to draft the Punjab Seed (Amendment) Bill and Punjab Farmer’s Rights Bill, and that the laws passed by Parliament usurped the powers of the provinces. The laws passed by Parliament, it was submitted, failed to recognize Pakistan’s international obligations to protect Farmers’ Rights and also usurped provincial jurisdiction. The petition filed by Sojhla for Social Change is supported by the Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek.
A representative appearing on behalf of the Federation of Pakistan submitted the Seed (Amendment) Act, 2015 and Plant Breeder’s Rights Act, 2016 were passed keeping in view advancements in technology and the needs of seed dealers.
After hearing arguments, the Full Bench adjourned the hearing of the matter to 26 February 2019 for arguments by the Federation of Pakistan.