The media reports about an agreement under which some 500,000 acres of land, located in each of the four provinces, would be leased out to Saudi Arabia to grow food crops that would then be whisked away to the desert kingdom, have been coming in for some time. Surprisingly, there has been little protest from any quarter. Yet imagine what this would mean in real terms: tracts of land within a country unable to meet the food needs of its own people would be converted into an oasis of green, where the best inputs provide the highest yields. Impoverished peasants, who survive on a pittance and struggle to eke out a living from their own patches of land, would be kept away by the stringent security measures to be installed around the lands. The abundant bounty grown here would not in any way benefit them. Indeed, some of those looking on may have been pushed into the growing sea of unemployment in cases where cultivated land is leased out. Others employed on these farmlands face potential exploitation. The Saudis are not known as especially benevolent employers.
There are other issues as well. Does the government have the moral authority to lease land that belongs to the state and the people of Pakistan? Can it, with any conscience, do so given that its priority must surely be to feed its own citizens? What will this mean in terms of political sovereignty, given that the control of vast farmlands will also give the Saudis a stronger hold over the country. Other issues could arise too. Saudi royals and their large entourages, permitted to hunt the endangered Houbara bustard in the southern Punjab, have for instance aroused the anger of local people who have complained about the attitude of the guests. Occasional complaints of the harassment of women have arisen. There are in this possible repercussions as far as Pak-Saudi ties go.
The wisdom of selling off valuables to meet immediate resource constraints must also be weighed more carefully. This is all the more true given that we have reports too that more land could be up for lease, possibly to the UAE and Qatar. This plan has been described too as being motivated by a desire to help our Muslim brethren. This is indeed a worthy sentiment. No doubt it was the prime factor behind the floating of the land lease plan by the Musharraf regime in 2007 and the decision by the ‘pro-people’ PPP government to go through with it. There are however better means to meet the food needs of the Saudis, who consume 2.6 million tonnes of wheat a year, and avoid some of the pitfalls mentioned. The resource-rich Arab nations should invest in poorer nations, such as Pakistan, by offering assistance to boost agriculture, improve irrigation and enhance productivity. Surplus food could then be bought by these states to feed their own people. This would be a situation that would benefit the maximum number of people everywhere and avoid adding to the problems faced by Pakistan and its people.
