In 2023, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition, World Report 2024 released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, an estimated 28.9 percent of the global population that is, 2.33 billion people were moderately or severely food insecure. This include 10.7 percent of the population – 864 million people who faced severe levels of food insecurity.

The crippling situation has not been created in just a day – it is the consistent promotion of imperialist neoliberal policies that have pushed for trade liberalization in food and agriculture, not to mention the killer conditionalities coerced by the IMF standby agreements in many parts of the world.

A significant growth, 16.8 percent has been reported in the production of wheat, cotton, and rice crops, and the sector improved its share in gross domestic production; agricultural sector growth of 6.3 percent was the highest in 19 years. The government of Pakistan continues to earn huge foreign exchange reserves, all through the back-breaking labor of peasants, a vast majority of whom include landless farmers, including women. However, it is indeed shameful that poverty rate in Pakistan has increased from 38.6 percent to 39.5 percent over the last five years, with food prices sky high, making basic food items to be beyond the reach of the poverty-stricken masses.

While the peasantry, and the urban poor face hunger and malnutrition, the government guards the interest of traders and investors such that it continues to import wheat grains from abroad, while pushing prices down for local wheat, pushing small and landless farmers in debt and bondage, left to face hunger and misery.

With more than 24 standby agreements with the IMF, the nation’s debt keeps soaring; it has increased by around Rs. 4.64 trillion in the past months. While the people of Pakistan suffer from monstrous policies protecting the imperialist and local elites, the scenario is no different in other part of the world.

The ongoing imperialist wars of aggression in occupied Palestine for the past 12 months has now spread to Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and is fast marching toward Iran. The destruction of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank knows no bounds; 70% of agricultural land being wasted through direct bombing and toxic chemicals; farmers are killed persecuted and their means of production such as water wells, trees including centuries old olive trees are deliberately destroyed; fisher folk are forbidden access to the seas. All this is part of the genocide happening in Occupied Palestine, and has been part and parcel of the US-led Zionist fascist regime for more than 7 decades.

The unchecked carbon emissions from our colonizers over many centuries has given rise to climate crisis. Globally, and particularly in Pakistan, it is starkly evident that climate change has vastly negative impact on food security especially for rural communities and a variety of climate change impacts such as floods, droughts, and hurricanes.

The solution lies in not putting the country up for sale and taking dictation from international financial institution like IMF, but for building self-reliance in food and agriculture and national industry. It is critical at this juncture that we adopt food sovereignty as the base for our food and agriculture policy; making the voice and decision making of small and landless farmers, especially women in policy development and implementing, making just and equitable land distribution a priority can help the country to break the shackle of debt and pauperization, and also help in establishing a national industry, prosperity and food security.

Release by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT)

The Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity in collaboration with Asian Peasant Coalition (APC), Pesticide Action Network (PAN AP) are marking the “World Hunger Day’ on October 16, 2023 – a day which is considered to be World Food Day. A peasant gathering (JALSA) has been organized in Ghotki, Sindh.

According to a recent report by UNICEF and the World Bank, about 333 million children (one in every six children) worldwide live in extreme poverty, while 62 million children in South Asia are living in extreme poverty. The World Food Programme estimates that 345 million people worldwide suffer from severe hunger, while according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the number of people suffering from hunger in the world in 2022 was between 691 million and 783 million. According to a recent UN statement, another 745 million people could suffer from severe hunger this year. Apparently, we are in the 21st century, and it seems that high technological advances are also taking place, but the world is facing increasing hunger, with rural women being the most disadvantaged, who are not only suffering from hunger and malnutrition but also deprived of proper employment and ownership of their personal land, especially agricultural land.

Given that Pakistan has been ranked 99th out of 129 nations in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report, where the level of hunger has been described as serious; food agencies such as World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), believe that more than eight million people are expected to experience “high levels of acute food insecurity.”

The situation has not been created in just a day – it is the consistent promotion of neoliberal policies that have pushed for trade liberalization in food and agriculture that have resulted in such a dire situation.

The intense land concentration, with just 5% feudal families having control over 67% of land is of course also a critical reason behind not only rising hunger but the intense indebtedness of the country. The small number of elite who govern our country has pushed it into an abyss of debt and pauperization; at the moment Pakistan has a debt of $85 billion which has resulted in a severe economic crisis forcing austerity measures on the people. The government has been begging for aid from different sources, and since beggars cannot be choosers agricultural land is being offered for lease to foreign entities. The government has created entities such as the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) that have an extraordinary presence of the armed forces. The SIFC is paying particular attention to privatization and investment, especially in food and agriculture, and will result in massive food exports. In addition, there is now land also being leased for corporate farming, with corporations being given priority over farmers, especially small and landless farmers. This is only going to have further grave consequences for rural communities, the bedrock of our society.

As a result of the IMF conditionalities, the prices of fuel have risen astronomically making it difficult for small farmers to continue food production. The rising debt of the farming community will end in exacerbating landlessness in the country.

The solution lies in not putting the country up for sale but in building self-reliance in food agriculture and national industry. Corporations and foreign direct investment will only leach the country of its resources, while reaping rich profits off our land and labor. It is critical at this juncture that we adopt food sovereignty as the base for our food and agriculture policy, with center space given to small and landless farmers, especially women in policy development and implementing. There is no doubt that by making just and equitable land distribution a priority can help the country to break the shackles of debt and pauperization, and also help in establishing a national industry.

Let us fight for Food Sovereignty, for Climate Justice, for National Sovereignty!

Released by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT);

March 8, 2023

Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity, on the occasion of the International Working Women’s Day on March 8, 2023, launches “Save our Invaluable Rural Assets: Campaign against Corporate Control of Dairy and Livestock Sector in Pakistan.” The campaign objectives are to resist the government-imposed regulations on natural pure milk and the increasing trade liberalization and control of the corporations in the sector. The campaign will also build awareness amongst the farming community and the masses to standup against the attack on their food, livelihood and the environment.

Punjab and Sindh Food Authorities have intensified law-making and regulations in the dairy sector. Punjab and Sindh Food Authorities have released the Pure Food Regulations 2018; the Punjab government has been making statements stressing the total ban of natural pure open milk in Lahore, to gradually increase the span to other parts of Punjab. According to these regulations, natural pure open milk can only be sold after pasteurization. Further, those businesses which produce and sell milk, or milk products have to get government licenses.

What forces and groups are behind these regulations? These regulations are based on the mandatory requirements of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Mechanisms and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreements of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that were pushed by mega-international corporations in the dairy and livestock sector. No doubt, regulations in Pakistan are being imposed at the behest of these very corporations. The value-added production and sale of milk and various dairy products such as butter, cheese, yoghurt among other products are carried out by these monopoly corporations, earning them enormous profits. At the other end of the spectrum are the small and landless farmers, especially landless women farmers and workers whose intense labour is responsible for providing the whole country with rich nutritious food including milk, dairy products and meat. In actuality, these corporations are trying to snatch away the livelihood and nutritious food of these hundreds of thousands of rural households. It is because of the key role of women small and landless farmers and agricultural labourers that this campaign is being launched on March 8, International Working Women’s Day.

It is very important to note that now foreign breeds of cows are being imported into Pakistan. There is a fear that our farmers will be coaxed into adopting these imported breeds in place of maintaining our own breeds; there is also the importation of semen for breeding animals. Trade liberalization has also allowed an influx of fodder and fodder seeds in the market from outside the country. What will be the result? Currently, Pakistan’s debts stand at about $126 billion (approximately PKR 337 kharab). The people, and the nation are facing acute distress in the face of such a humongous debt, and cannot bear the further burden. Instead of saving, and safeguarding our invaluable livestock breeds we are heaping more debt on ourselves and giving an open invitation to monopoly corporations to take control of our resources and markets.

The livestock sector has a 60% share of agriculture and contributes 11% to the GDP. This sector provides income to nearly ten million rural households, and their own food security; in fact, the food security of the nation rests on the shoulders of these rural households. Indeed, it is these small and landless farmers whose intense labour has pushed Pakistan to be the 4th biggest milk-producing country in the world. It is this amazing production that imperialist forces, using the shield of trade liberalization and neoliberalism, are trying to take over. No doubt, the very large consumer base of South Asia and China is a very lucrative market for their dairy and meat products. At the moment, 80% of the natural pure open milk supply is by small and landless farmers, which rankles with the corporate sector and views this hold of our farmers with acute hostility. Different ‘legal’ manoeuvres as well as constant propaganda are being launched against small producers and sellers.

Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek fully intends to block this imperialist agenda. We know how to take care of our invaluable assets. In the past, we lost our extremely precious traditional seeds and that wealth of biodiversity has been replaced with very poor quality genetic and hybrid seeds; these unnatural seeds are hazardous to humanity, to the farming community, and to the environment. We will now not allow our invaluable livestock to be lost, their germplasm to now be plundered and controlled by monopolistic corporations in their greed for super profits!

Roots for Equity and Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek held the National Food Systems Summit at Renewal Center, Lahore on September 22, 2021. The National Summit was held as national mobilization towards the Global People’s Summit (GPS) for Just, Equitable, Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems. The GPS has been organized through the coordinated efforts of peoples’ movements and farmers’ movements, a unity of more than 21 organizations across the world, and is a Global-South led initiative to counter the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and its neoliberal corporate agenda being held on September 23, 2021.

We, the people, maintain that UNFSS has been overtaken by the private interests of the corporates and elites. Dr. Azra Talat Sayeed, Executive Director at Roots for Equity, shed light on how the UNFSS platform is using neoliberal policies to reinforce corporate control over food and agriculture through propagating false solutions (e.g. food fortification, genetic modification, industrial meat production systems, monocultural food production) to climate change, hunger and malnutrition. It is clear that corporate-driven approaches are marginalizing, criminalizing and co-opting indigenous knowledge as well as eroding biodiversity through industrializing agriculture. The National Food Systems Summit Pakistan aims to counter the corporate-controlled narrative of UNFSS by amplifying people’s demands for genuine food systems transformation.

Through the panel sessions on land and environmental rights, women’s rights and collective rights over natural, genetic and productive resources, the National Summit highlighted the injustices that prevail in our current corporate-controlled, feudal-controlled food systems. In particular, Asif Khan and Chowdhry Aslam talked about issues of landlessness and corporate capture of genetic and productive resources. Roop Kanwal, a member of PKMT Youth Wing said that a critical issue remains the total control of land by a handful of feudal families in the country and absolute negation of women farmers’ rights, an overwhelming majority of whom are landless. Shaheen Maher said that women agriculture workers receive a pittance for their backbreaking labour, especially working on export-driven crops such as cotton and sugarcane. Malik Aman, PKMT member from Manshera posited that environmental degradation by corporate-led systems are a discord to environmental justice.

Furthermore, the National Summit engaged farmers, including women, youth and landless farmers, trade union, academics, civil society and activists from various sectors in a series of workshops. As a contribution to the collective global response of peoples’ movements, participating farmers and activists formulated concrete demands and developed initial action plans for achieving food sovereignty through genuine agrarian reform, sustainable system change and a radical transformation of the world’s food systems.

Tahir Mehdi from Punjab Lok Sujag, Fozia Parveen from LUMS, Neelam Hussain from Simorgh Publications and Tahira Abdullah, a human rights defender, also raised key issues during their interventions in the panel sessions.

Demands:

• Genuine agrarian reform and implementation of just, equitable and self-reliant sustainable food production and consumption systems that are based on small and landless farmers, including women farmers, ownership and control over land and other critical productive resources, access to safe and decent livelihood, and sustainable food production and consumption systems;

• Women’s control over land and livestock as a key resource for protecting and promoting a healthy balanced life for women, their children and communities;

• Recognition of the role that women and rural communities play in conserving plant and animal genetic resources, ensuring the continuity of biodiverse ecosystems and perpetuating agricultural practices rooted in traditional knowledge;

• Promoting environmentally safe technologies that are controlled and owned by communities as the ultimate guardians of our environmental resources;

• Prevent farmers’ evictions from indigenous land and ensure that no development work acts as a cover for further land grabbing or resource grabbing by corporations;

• Ensuring that all farmers and indigenous populations retain their customary rights over commons/public lands, forests, water resources and other ecologies which is crucial sources of their life and livelihood;

• An end to the stronghold of monopolistic agrochemical transnational corporations over global food production and distribution systems;

• An end to trade liberalization through dismantling of institutions and mechanisms such as the WTO, and other inequitable bilateral and multilateral trade agreements such as the RCEP, CPTPP among other that allow the monopolization of global trade by TNCs;

• Accountability of Transnational agribusinesses for the industrial fossil-fuel-based industrial production to the imminent climate emergency vis-à-vis unchecked high levels of greenhouse gas emissions;

• Immediate, state-led action towards outlawing toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers and reinstating sustainable agroecological/indigenous farming and livestock practices based on food sovereignty principles;

• Ensure a robust public healthcare system that makes quality healthcare accessible to rural populations, including free testing services for Covid-19 as well as immediate provision of free and accessible vaccination;

• Establish markets, led by small farmers, particularly women farmers;

• Mobilize farmers and other sectors to form unions and associations that build and strengthen the movement against capitalist corporate hegemony of capitalist countries in food and agriculture.

Release by: Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek & Roots for Equity

17 July 2021 – Dossier

Dr. Azra Talat Sayeed –

The State of Food Security and Nutrition 2020 stated that almost 690 million people went hungry around the world in 2019, a ten million increase on 2018[1]. It came as no surprise that the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation predicted that a further 83-132 million could be pushed into chronic hunger due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest figures clearly show how our governments and an entire range of multilateral agencies are fighting a losing battle in their attempts to reach the sustainable development goal of ending all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030. But these devastating figures cannot be laid at the pandemic’s door alone, as trends since 2014 showed that hunger was on the rise. In Pakistan, despite being a prolific food producer, 36.9% of the country’s population remains food insecure and the statistics on malnutrition and consequent health concerns reflect the abject state of poverty of its citizens, particularly rural women and children.

How could such an advanced society have drifted so far from meeting one of its most critical and basic human needs? To understand this and the problem of hunger and malnutrition in a world that has surplus food production, an analysis of the political economy of hunger could yield some critical insights.

The WTO and its impact on small farmers

The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 subjected the agriculture sector to a universal binding set of agreements for the first time. Key WTO agreements such as the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), which had been vigorously pushed by the US corporate lobby at the WTO, constituted a vicious attack on farmers, especially small and landless farmers, unleashing neoliberal deregulation, privatization and liberalization policies on poor subsistence farmers in the third world.

These agreements not only established a rigorous system governing international trade in food and agriculture but forced third-world governments to reduce the production and export support they provided to their farmers, while at the same time obliging them to open their markets to imports from other countries. They also pose a grave threat to the ownership of indigenous knowledge of farming communities and indigenous peoples.

How have these conditions impacted the food security of small and landless farmers in the Global South, especially the women? One needs to remind that the burden of ensuring household food security rests mainly on the women, particularly the rural women in the Global South.

In order to understand the impact of the AoA some basic differences between first and third-world agricultural producers must be taken into account. Referring to India as an example the international research group GRAIN states “India’s farmers have an average landholding of one hectare, while US farmers’ average landholding is 176 hectares. There are 2.1 million farms across the US, employing less than 2% of the population, with an average annual on-farm income per farm household of $18,637. Whereas more than half of India’s 1.3 billion that depend on agriculture do so for their livelihoods, with the average annual income of per farm household (from all sources) at less than US$1000.”[2]

The result is a tragic debt burden borne by millions of small farmers across Africa, Latin America and Asia. The majority of third world countries have what can be considered a semi-colonial and semi-feudal mode of production, which basically means that they are dependent on first world countries for agricultural inputs such as seed, fertilizers and pesticides. The domestic political landscape portrays control and ownership of land by very powerful feudal elites and rich farmers, while small and landless farmers lack any political clout. This is in contrast to the political power of the farm lobbies and mega-agrochemical corporations in the advanced capitalist world. Furthermore, the wealthy industrialized countries also provide very high levels of domestic support to their farmers.

The creation of the WTO triggered a clarion call to “Junk WTO” and to resist neoliberal policies in agriculture; farmers across the world developed the concept of Food Sovereignty, which comprises a set of principles ensuring the right of every human being to safe and nutritious food and the right of the small and landless farmers to produce food and earn a decent livelihood. Across Asia, many grassroots organizations started to mobilize rural communities and farmers to resist the draconian WTO agreements, with women farmers playing a key role.

WTO impacts on women dairy farmers in Pakistan

TRIPs and the AoA have had an immense impact on small and landless farmers in Pakistan: domestic seed saving systems have been wrested out of their hands through new legal mechanisms, production has been threatened by an onslaught of imported processed foods, livestock, and semen, while access to land has been affected by land-grabbing, for the large-scale production of crops that yield ethanol for example.

A particular case in point is the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) mechanism, a key WTO agreement that sets out the basic rules on food safety and animal and plant health standards. Based on the SPS, Pakistan, through its Punjab Food Authority (PFA), which is responsible for setting standards for food articles and regulating their manufacturing, storage, distribution, sale and imports, passed a set of Pure Food Laws that included a pasteurization policy for the province of Punjab, simultaneously implementing a ban on the sale of unprocessed milk. These homogenizing rules are the direct result of a globalized industrialized approach to food production that makes production processes complex and costly. Just before the onslaught of Covid-19, the PFA had given directives that in the city of Lahore, Punjab, sales of open milk would be banned by 2022.

At present, almost 95% of milk sales are from small and landless farmers, with Punjab accounting for almost 70% of the livestock and agriculture sector in Pakistan. As almost 90% of livestock care is in the hands of landless rural women, the SPS has critical implications for women farmers.

It is clear that transnational dairy corporations are eyeing the multiple products that milk yields such as butter, cheese, cream, yogurt, and buttermilk. Pakistan has one of the best cow and buffalo species that yield rich, creamy milk; there is little doubt that European countries, the USA, and Australia are pushing neoliberal policies in this sector to capture this lucrative market. Animal dung is also of interest as it yields biogas, an alternate source of energy to fossil fuels. Furthermore, seed corporations are promoting hybrid and genetically engineered maize seeds for fodder. Agribusinesses such as Nestlé and Friesland Campina have the capital to set up large processing facilities and benefit from economies of scale, while small producers are pushed out and deprived of their livelihoods.

The SPS agreement was therefore a death knell to poor women farmers, for whom livestock rearing is a vital economic asset. Milk and its byproducts (milk, butter, clarified butter, yogurt, and lassi) contribute to a household’s food security, especially in hard times, and are also a source of daily income. Animal dung is used for cooking and is a source of heat during winter.

The importance of the livestock and dairy sector for rural food security in Pakistan became particularly clear during the COVID-19 lockdown. According to rural women, for most landless families milk and butter, along with rotis made from wheat flour, were the main source of food for the entire household and if these items had not been available in those dark difficult months, hunger would have been much worse Lockdowns were imposed in Pakistan from March to May 2020, the prime wheat harvest months. Many women could not take part in the harvest due to the lockdown or lack of transport. Also, as large numbers of men had come back from the cities as there were no longer any jobs there, there was less work available for the women. Hence, women’s earnings from the wheat harvest were considerably lower than usual.

Organizing and resistance of women dairy producers in Pakistan

The Farmers’ Alliance Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) was formed in 2008. In a very patriarchal society, where no more than 2 % of women own land, PKMT had a very difficult time organizing women, but a determined ten-year thrust of ensuring women farmers’ membership has led to rich gains. This could be especially gauged during the pandemic as women stood up to defend their right to produce and consume safe food using agroecological methods and promote seed sovereignty.

PKMT quickly responded to the milk grab initiated by the PFA in 2019 and mobilized its women members to resist the corporate capture of the dairy sector. This was extremely timely as during the COVID-19 public eating-places were closed and as a result, milk sales were severely impacted and women lost considerable income. Big corporations started buying milk as they could save it in big chillers and women found that they had to sell milk to them at nearly half of the pre-pandemic market price. Through PKMT women came to understand the power of these corporations as well as the acute need of having control over milk as a food source. In spite of the pandemic, the women continued to organize and mobilize. On March 8, 2020, there was a nationwide mobilization demanding women’s farmers’ rights; women categorically challenged corporations for promoting agrochemical farming as well as the ongoing propaganda against raw or fresh milk and allegations that it has a harmful impact on human health. Even with the deepening impact of the pandemic, women celebrated Rural Women’s Day on October 15 with a strong attack on the dairy corporations as by now they had suffered the impact of COVID-19 lockdown on milk sales. At the PKMT General Assembly women also spoke out vehemently against the corporate milk grab.

Many PKMT women members have joined men to start farms run on agroecological principles. Throughout 2020, they remained committed to traditional wheat growing, even though there was constant pressure from government agencies to revert to agrochemical farming, which the authorities maintained would yield much higher production. Some of these farms are in riverine areas, where there is a constant threat of flooding and loss of harvests. But even in the face of such multiple crises, women have stood strong. They are totally self-sufficient in livestock, animal dung, and compost, as well as seeds through seed saving. The reward, though based on backbreaking labor, is self-sufficiency in ample, healthy, and nourishing food.

One woman, who had been keeping livestock as well as running an agroecological farm, had to sell her buffalo to meet hospital bills but afterward bought a calf. Though she did not have the money to buy a buffalo, she was willing to buy a calf in order to keep her farm going. Of course, it is certainly not all sunshine: one woman, who wanted to access her land, was denied it by her brothers. Through her constant negotiations with her brothers, she obtained just enough land to establish a seed bank; this is something that PKMT encourages its members to do to enable them to break away from dependence on corporate seeds. Another young widow was denied access to land by her family but continues to rear livestock and is a strong voice within PKMT advocating against patriarchy and the corporate capture of agriculture.

So it is clear that the fight for food sovereignty must be conducted on several fronts, including standing fast against corporate capture, feudalism, and patriarchy.

More information:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of Food Security and Nutrition around the World in 2020, July 2020. http://www.fao.org/3/ca9692en/online/ca9692en.html#chapter-1_1

Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek, https://pkmt.noblogs.org/

[1] http://www.fao.org/3/ca9692en/online/ca9692en.html

The Fight for Food Sovereignty in Pakistan and the role of Women

July 1, 2021

On July 1, 2021, Pakistan Kissan Mazdoor Tehreek (PKMT) and Roots for Equity held a webinar to launch their joint campaign titled “Building a Healthy Planet: Promoting Safe and Nutritious Food for All.”

Mr. Tariq Mehmood provided an overview of the campaign with its objective of sensitizing small producers, consumers and society in general regarding the human and environmental cost of corporate-controlled and chemical-intensive industrial agricultural production and promoting the use of agroecology and food sovereignty as an antidote to corporate agriculture.

Dr. Azra Talat Sayeed from Roots for Equity highlighted the need for an alliance of progressive voices and platforms in urban and rural areas that can struggle for access to safe and nutritious food for all, especially in the face of a global crisis the Covid-19 pandemic. She highlighted the urgent need for solidarity amongst small producers, industrial workers, consumers, academics, women, youth and other actors in the struggle for food sovereignty. According to her, that was the most needful act as a way forward in the face of multiple social, economic and political factors that are impacting food production and consumption. She highlighted the numerous crises including food and economic crisis, environmental, health and climate among others. Dr Sayeed identified the role of corporate agriculture along with other imperialist institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other institutions that should be held accountable for the destruction of the environment and sharply rising global inequities, including rising hunger.

Shaheen Mahar, a PKMT member from Ghotki, highlighted women farmers’ immense, unparalleled labour and demanded immediate redressal for the injustices they face, especially their lack of access to food, let alone safe and nutritious food. In the face of Covid-19, women are facing acute hunger as well as lack of decent livelihood. She stressed the need for not only women’s right to land but implementation of land ownership for women farmers. She pointed out that the ongoing trade liberalization and corporatization of the dairy sector along with government-led crackdowns on the sale of raw milk are a direct threat to rural women’s livelihoods and their right to food sovereignty. Shaheen also elaborated on the gendered impact of chemical pesticide usage; since women agriculture workers are extensively involved in pesticide application, they face numerous health risks due to direct exposure to toxic pesticides.

Asif Khan, a farmer from Haripur and PKMT Steering Committee member stressed the need for self-reliance in food and agriculture production. He emphasized that unchecked industrial development, capitalist first-world countries and fossil-fuel driven corporate agriculture are responsible for environmental destruction, climate crisis and are a source of a high percentage of past and present emissions. Yet, it is small and landless farmers in third world countries, along with other marginalized groups, who disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change. Asif critiqued the inequitable nature of the world food system; despite having tenuous access and ownership rights to land and other productive resources, small farmers toil ceaselessly to produce most of the world’s food. He stressed the need for an alternate just and equitable food system as the basis for healthy, nutritious food production.

Mr. Zahoor Joya presented an outline of the scheduled activities for the campaign starting from today and continuing until October 16, 2021, culminating in programs to mark 15^th and 16^th October as the International Day for Rural Women, and World Food Day which PKMT and Roots for Equity mark as World Hunger Day.

Demands:

• An end to poisonous agricultural inputs and an end to monopolistic control of TNCs in the food and agriculture sector;

• Provision of food and agriculture laws that promote agroecological food production as a safe, viable & sustainable alternative to corporate agriculture;

• Mobilization of peasant movements to fight for their right to self-reliance and self-determination in food production & distribution;

• Promotion of healthy and nutritious cultural foods like local fruits and vegetables, milk, desi ghee, butter and lassi as opposed to mass-produced, processed foods devoid of nutrition

• Repeal of detrimental neoliberal food and agriculture policies that impede farmers’ right to decent livelihood

• Prioritize just, equitable and genuine land reforms that allow land redistribution to landless farmers (including women agriculture workers) along with control over all productive resources;

• Farmers’ access to and control over reliable markets for agricultural and non-agricultural products

• Small and landless farmers’ access to government credit schemes, government subsidies and social security benefits.