Shahid Zia
Ashoka Fellow since 2007   |   Pakistan

Shahid Zia

Lok Sanjh
Shahid Zia is popularizing organic farming among small farmers, in both barrage areas and arid zones in Pakistan. He is developing farmer groups and setting up programs for seed development and…
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This description of Shahid Zia's work was prepared when Shahid Zia was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship in 2007.

Introduction

Shahid Zia is popularizing organic farming among small farmers, in both barrage areas and arid zones in Pakistan. He is developing farmer groups and setting up programs for seed development and organic farm certification to make organic farming affordable and profitable.

The New Idea

Shahid has created a seed bank, with the accompanying technical and management back up support systems, for small farmers in Punjab, to help them establish organic farming as a means of economic and environmental sustainability. The technical and management support, including early-stage help with marketing their organic produce, are provided to farmers’ groups through regional offices. The technical support also includes agro-technology such as water conservation techniques, pest management, seed development, and so on. Management support includes assistance with storage of seeds and produce, and time and plantation management.
Shahid founded Lok Sanjh to organize farmers into groups at the village level and then bring them together in the form of Dehqan Assembly. Shahid supports the assembly’s work on key issues and helps them lobby for governmental support. The assembly also works as a focal point for farmers to take decisions and coordinate their activities. Lok Sanjh regularly disseminates knowledge and information about organic farming to assembly members.
Lok Sanjh works in arid and barrage areas. In arid zones, small farmers often do not receive an adequate return from the farm and so leave to work as off-farm labor, with the women in the household doing the farming. Shahid has developed an integrated farming system that helps such women farmers to phase-wise increase the yield and, in the meantime, they are provided with loans in the form of seed, grains, and goats, to continue farming until a level of sustainability is reached.
To help small farmers in barrage areas move towards organic farming, Shahid is developing the infrastructure to help them market their organic produce locally and internationally. For the international market, he has acquired the license to certify the produce as organic. He has developed systems to help farmers package and distribute the produce in the local market. Indeed, the Lok Sanjh office at Sheikhupura operates as an organic produce outlet as well.

The Problem

Fifty-eight percent of Pakistan’s 6,620,054 private farm holdings are less than 2.0 hectares in area. But together they only cover 16 percent of the farm area. Another 28 percent of farm holdings are between 2 and 5 hectares and cover 30 percent of the farm area. The majority of these small farmers are poor and, due to intensive cropping, soil fertility has declined so much that the yield often does not ensure food security even for the farmer’s household. 
Shahid views declining production capacity as the major problem for farm households. An important reason behind the declining capacity is the inability of the farmer to manage the farm as a business. Another key reason is a blind dependence on investments in new seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, and other farm inputs available in the market without considering sustainability and long-term returns. Not only does the purchase of these materials increase the cost of production, their use also reduces soil fertility and increases vulnerability towards new kinds of pest attacks. Small farmers use flood irrigation and try to use all farmland as much as possible. This intensive use in the last quarter of century has decreased production capacity and the farmers are now forced to work as wage labor to sustain their families. Meanwhile, the cultivation of local plants has reduced and the formerly wide ranges of grains and vegetables, and other plants have given way to single-type cultivation. This has in turn reduced knowledge about local diversity among present day farmers.
Shahid sees corporate farming by foreign investors replacing the big landlords and changing the entire tenant farming system, thus marginalizing the small farmer. These small and tenant farmers are unorganized, mostly illiterate and unable to distinguish between good and bad practices. The breaking up of the traditional community system has scattered them and, rather than forming cooperatives for mutual support, they are competing against each other. With the removal of farm subsidies, the increasing cost of farm inputs and the changing market conditions all adding to the woes of small farmers, poverty and food insecurity have increased tremendously in the rural areas of Pakistan.
Shahid believes that the market for organic products and the increasing public awareness about the value of organically grown products offers small farmers in Pakistan an opportunity to revitalize the land and plan for long-term returns. It is an opportunity to switch from market-driven farming methods to ecologically sound practices that can reshape the entire farming industry—making the small producers competitive.

The Strategy

Shahid founded Lok Sanjh in 2002 and led it until 2005, establishing offices in Islamabad and Sheikhupura. For Shahid and Lok Sanjh, the small farmer is the primary target audience. During this period, Lok Sanjh organized the farmers into “farmers’ groups.” They developed a two-pronged approach towards working with farmers in arid zones and barrage areas. In arid zones, where the male members of the household are already forced to work as wage labor and the farm is left untilled, Shahid motivated farmers to revitalize a part of the land with help of the women in the household. They focused their efforts on growing grains and vegetables for food, and starting poultry and livestock-raising as a means to obtain cash income. In barrage areas, Lok Sanjh workers convinced farmers to try organic farming in parts of their farm and discuss good farm management practices in their groups. Lok Sanjh also published pamphlets and a weekly newspaper to inform farmers about good practices and market trends.
From the first phase of work, Lok Sanjh realized that, even in barrage areas, the inadequate use of fertilizers, loss of local seeds, and poor quality of pesticides (especially banned ones) were causing severe hardship to the farmers. In arid zones, the small land holdings and lack of water prevented adequate crop production. In 2005, Lok Sanjh formed women’s groups in arid zones and has since helped to establish grain, livestock, and seed banks. The group identifies deserving women and lends to them from the grain, livestock, and seeds provided by Lok Sanjh. In addition, Lok Sanjh is helping the farmers in arid zones develop a water harvesting system to overcome water shortage problems. This integrated farming approach is helping households in more than 175 villages to cope with poverty and gradually emerge from it.
In the barrage areas of Sheikhupura, Lok Sanjh has expanded from twelve villages in 2003 to over 150 at the end of 2006. In more than 150 villages farmers have pilot tested organic farming on cash crops like rice and are expanding organic methods to larger portions of their crops. They have found the yield to be equal to that of crops grown with the use of industrially produced fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds. In 2004 the majority of the rice crops sprayed with pesticides failed while the organically farmed rice crop was not affected; this bolstered the confidence of the villagers to expand the organic farming methods. The Lok Sanjh method is to use local seeds, do mixed plantation with cash crops, use natural fertilizers, and avoid pesticides as they also kill the ‘good insects’.
As the villagers expand organic farm methods to growing vegetables, psychological barriers are the biggest challenge. Lok Sanjh organizes farmer’s meetings and holds assemblies to discuss good ecological practices (their benefits and challenges), all the while motivating farmers to experiment on small pieces of their land. Lok Sanjh organizers know that psychological barriers are best broken by successful results emerging out of the farmers’ own work and disseminate success stories to help motivate farmers to experiment. Lok Sanjh has also developed its own seed production farm, where varieties of local plants nearing extinction are reproduced and integrated pest management techniques are demonstrated. In addition, every village gets its own store for organic seeds and manure.
To help the farmers market their product internationally, Lok Sanjh has acquired the license to act as a certification agency in Pakistan. Presently, certification is both a costly and time consuming process as there are no certification companies in Pakistan. Lok Sanjh is also exploring a distribution channel for both local and international markets. They aim to establish their own outlets as well as partner with bulk purchasers in urban markets like hotels and supermarkets. In the next three years, Lok Sanjh hopes to develop the farmers’ group and the assembly as the key player in organic farming in Pakistan—making them the champions of organic farming and establishing their capacity to manage, produce, and market the organic produce. Lok Sanjh will gradually move to being a back-up service provider, while seeking other avenues for innovation. For the arid zones, Lok Sanjh will reach out to a larger group of farmers, especially women farmers, and develop a support group that can help the poor break the poverty trap.

The Person

Shahid comes from a family of farmers in barrage areas. As a child he developed affection for the poor and supported them as much as he could from his own pocket and through any other resources he could mobilize. He grew up in an environment where his family was involved in resolving disputes arising out of family feuds and interpersonal conflicts. Drawn to agriculture, he studied it for his college degree to build his ability to contribute meaningfully to the field. He was employed by the Pakistan Agricultural Research Center where he received a grant to go to the U.S. to pursue his doctoral studies.
During his sojourn in the U.S., he was faced with the issue of helping a sick child survive. This was the first time he realized he could do something for the public good and the experience motivated him to look for ways to help people. Eventually, he began thinking about how to improve agricultural land in Pakistan. When he returned to Pakistan, he joined the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in 1997 and got involved in the global debate around the relationship between farm poverty, the World Trade Organization, and the withdrawal of farm subsidies. The pan-South Asian exposure he acquired with the SDPI helped him understand that these debates were very important for other South Asian countries but not so much for Pakistan. Most farmers, he felt, were detached from the emerging global trends in agriculture. In 2000, he left SDPI to head SUNGI, where he felt he could be directly involved with the small farmers. Both these assignments helped him to understand the ground realities, and in 2003 he formally registered Lok Sanjh to work full-time on his idea.

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