ISLAMABAD, Jan 9: The Sustainable Agriculture Action Group (SAAG) has asked the government to immediately freeze development on Corporate Agriculture Farming (CAF) policy, saying it will cause massive displacement of rural communities , create wide- scale unemployment and enhance food insecurity in the country.

The demand was made in a press conference held at Rawalpindi Press Club camp office here on Sunday. Speaking on the occasion, SAAG representatives including Arifa Mazhar of Sungi, Mohsin Arif of SDPI, Jan Nisar Khalil of Pakistan Kisan Ittehad and Rashid Malik of Action Aid criticized the CAF policy and disagreed with government's assumption that these companies were solution to world hunger.

Corporate firms, they said, were profit-making entities whose primary aim was to maximize profits and not to feed people. These firms invest in financially lucrative crops, hampering local food production system and promoting mono-cropping culture which simply meant losing bio-diversity, they added.

The SAAG, a coalition of leading NGOs and farmers' organizations from across the country, views the expected CAF decision of the government as an effort to protect the interests of landlords by bringing them into alliance with the corporate sector, the speakers said.

Roshan Malik said: "Government is shying away from its promise of introducing land reforms in the country to empower small subsistence farming communities, landless Kissan and Haris and unemployed agriculture graduates."

He said state land should be distributed among the landless farmers and the agriculture graduates to reduce unemployment and increase growth through indigenous labour.

These foreign corporate firms would leave the country after making our land barren as they have already done in some other countries by growing cash crops instead of traditional ones, he added.

Replying to a query, Mr Malik said the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) would not provide water for corporate farming and the firms would have to utilize the underground reserves.

As the corporate firms would only have a few years contract, they would focus on cash crops which always demanded more water. Thus the water table would drop to danger level within a few years and land would become barren, he added.

The CAF, he said, was in contrast to the government's existing Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper and the UN Convention on Desertification as both strongly recommended distribution of government land among the landless tenants.

Arifa Mazhar of Sungi expressed her concern over the government's growing emphasis on the role of multinational companies in the agriculture sector of the country. The government's move, she said, would further worsen the situation of food insecurity in the country.

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 72 districts of the country faced food insecurity in one way or the other, she added. "Corporate farming would tantamount to handing over the control of our food production and distribution systems from indigenous rural communities to outside corporate forces.

"Corporate farmers would be given many exemptions to lesson their cost of production while the poor farmers are deprived of any such packages," Ms Mazhar said. Mohsin Babar of the SDPI said corporate farming would result in unimaginable rural unemployment, as modern farming methods focused on mechanisation and were capital intensive.