Food rights activists claim multinational companies are in Pakistan to capture lucrative seed markets, upsetting traditional farming systems in the process. They say the country's food security lies in empowering farmers and giving them more control over natural resources rather than facilitating foreign companies to market products that have unknown impact. They believe that corporate interference in subsistence rural economies will increase the incidence of poverty in a country where 34 percent of the total population does not earn more than a dollar a day. Food rights activists say multinational companies are in Pakistan and India to capture lucrative seed markets, upsetting traditional farming systems in the process. Pictured here are Pakistani farmers loading grain.
Sources say the government is fully convinced of the miracles of the global market economy.
Since 1994, when the Pakistani government recognized the seed business as an industry, the private sector share in the country's seed market has risen to 16 percent. In 1998-99, multinational companies distributed as much as 6,100 metric tonnes of seed in a market that requires around 1.2 million metric tonnes of seed annually. About 80 percent of Pakistan's farmers have less than two hectares of land or are landless. Pakistan's cash-strapped government, meanwhile, is making controversial overtures to open its agricultural markets to foreign investment under international trade agreements. The government failed to include most of the concerns expressed by food rights activists in the final draft of the Plant Breeders Rights law.