Rural transformation: a structural solution

Improved seeds and livestock genetics made headlines at the UN. But without water reform and land rights, Pakistan’s smallholders may see little benefit.

On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s 81st session, there happens a meeting of Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif with Bill Gates. The meeting usually has the discussion on polio and poverty but this time agriculture was also the subject. The discussion around the agriculture revolves around improved seeds, livestock genetics, biotechnology and climate resilience. It sounds like exactly what Pakistan needs but when we look closer a hard question arises. Is this the reform that is actually required for the rural poor or we need something far more structural?

Agriculture matters much even more than most people think because it is contributing 23.4 percent in GDP and employing 33.1 percent of national labour force. Livestock alone is engaging 8 million rural families and contributing 35-40 percent of their income. Also, it is the major driver of agriculture growth by accounting 62.4 percent in agriculture’s value addition and 14.6 percent in GDP. On the other hand, crops swing wildly between good and bad years. This isn’t a side story in Pakistan’s economy — it is THE STORY. Whatever happens to wheat, cotton, and dairy farmers happens to one third of the country’s workforce.

That’s exactly why the Gates meeting deserves scrutiny rather than applause alone. Agriculture sector isn’t just underperforming rather it is doing so while the people associated to it are getting poorer. Pakistan’s national poverty rate has climbed from 21.9 percent in 2018-19 to 28.9 percent in 2024-25. The damage isn’t evenly spread. Rural poverty jumped from 28.2 percent to 36.2 percent, while urban poverty rose from 11 to 17.4 percent over the same period. Pakistan Panel Household Survey (PPHS) 2024 by PIDE put rural poverty even higher, at 36.6 percent, alongside 60 percent of households facing some form of food insecurity. In other words, the villages that grow the country’s food are increasingly the places where people can’t afford to eat well.

Government needs not to start from zero, it has already set up the National Agriculture and Food Security Council and a National Meat Sector Transformation and Export Council with an aim to give food policy some institutional teeth and pushing the meat exports to $700 million target by 2028.

But here’s what is missing and unfortunate: the two problems that actually strangle Pakistani agriculture remained broadly untouched — water and land governance. Ninety percent of Pakistan’s water goes to farming, yet the country can store less than 10 percent of the water it receives from rain and snow, and nearly half of what does reach farms is lost in distribution before it even touches a crop. Pakistan is now widely counted among the world’s ten most climate-vulnerable countries, hit by floods one year and drought the next, with per-capita water availability falling every decade as the population heads toward a projected 350 million by 2050.

Biotech seeds and better livestock genetics as discussed on international forums are genuinely useful. Improved seed varieties can potentially raise the crop yields while better breeds can improve milk and meat output. But planting a drought-resistant seed in a field that gets no reliable water, or improving a cow’s genetics while the farmer has no cold-chain to sell the milk, is like upgrading the engine of a car with no roads to drive it on. The more urgent reform is water governance, irrigation efficiency and secure land tenure for the small farmers who make up the vast majority of Pakistan’s agricultural workforce. According to the 7th Agricultural Census 2024, 97 percent of farmers in Pakistan own less than 12.5 acres of land, classifying the vast majority of the nation’s agricultural community as small landowners. Without the aforementioned reforms the innovation benefit could only be absorbed by large landholders who already have water and capital, and the small farmers who are living below the poverty line could seek minimal or no benefit at all.

This is where the concept of rural transformation becomes useful. Rural transformation isn’t the same as “improving agriculture” alone, rather it is a broader shift and a holistic change. Such transformation happens when rural economies stop depending entirely on farming rather they also start generating income from agro-processing, rural services, small manufacturing, and better-connected markets. When rural areas transform then farming itself becomes more productive and less labour-intensive. It’s as much about roads, electricity, education, and non-farm jobs in villages as it is about advanced seeds. A farmer’s daughter or son who can get vocational training and a job in a rural food-processing unit can do more for rural poverty reduction in long run than a slightly better wheat variety.

Pakistan’s policy discussions with donors and foundations majorly revolve around the agri-tech, seeds, fertilizer, and genetics. It’s the easier conversation to have, and the easier one to fund. Rural transformation is harder as it requires land reform, decentralized planning, and investment in human capital but yet it is the most promising pathway.

China’s experience is instructive for Pakistan in adoption of rural transformation path. Pakistan need not to copy it wholesome but can learn from it. Chinese model is an example that shows what rural transformation looks like when it is taken seriously as a package rather than a slogan. China’s growth since 1980s has helped lift more than 800 million people out of poverty, and since 2017 it has run a dedicated Rural Revitalization Strategy built around modern farming, land reforms and repairing environmental damage. Momentously, this strategy of transformation is not only about better crops rather Chinese universities alone have commercialized more than 18,000 agricultural technologies over five years’ period and generating over 71 billion yuan in revenue. All this gain is feeding directly into rural industry, not just rural fields. China still isn’t finished yet, its 15th Five Year Plan (2026-2030) is aiming to accelerate and modernize agriculture and rural areas with a focus on turning the country into an agricultural powerhouse by 2035.

None of the above discussions means that the Gates meeting was a waste. Collaboration on seeds and livestock genetics can help, and Pakistan should absolutely take useful technology wherever it can find it. But the test of this partnership won’t be measured somewhere abroad, rather it will be measured locally whether a smallholder in southern Punjab or interior Sindh sees an actual rise in income five years from now, or whether the benefits unequally goes to big hands only.

Pakistan doesn’t need another agri-tech announcement; it needs a rural transformation strategy: a strategy where seeds, water, land rights, and rural jobs are treated as one connected problem, not four separate ones.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026