ISLAMABAD: Pakistani farmers say they have been kept out of the loop and fear exploitation by Chinese businesses as Pakistan heads to Beijing later this week for the eighth meeting of the Pak-China Joint Coordination Committee where agricultural cooperation deals are expected to be signed between the two countries. 
Earlier this year, Pakistan announced that a new sub-group had been set up within the $60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) of energy and infrastructure projects. The new category includes sectors like education, health skills development, housing, and most importantly, agriculture, which accounts for 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP.
A top official at Pakistan’s largest farmers’ association said the government had not taken farmers into confidence “at any level” about agricultural cooperation with China.
“We are worried about the government’s plans of entering China into our agriculture sector without holding any prior consultations with farmers,” Mian Muhammad Umair Masood, the secretary-general the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, told Arab News. “We fear Chinese businessmen will create a monopoly here in the name of cooperation and exploit local farmers.”
A June 2017 report in Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper outlined that agricultural cooperation with China could potentially include allowing the Chinese to lease or purchase large tracts of Pakistani farmland and operate their own farms and processing facilities using capital grants and loans from Beijing and the Chinese Development Bank.
Officials also foresee technology transfers, infrastructure upgrades, and extensive cooperation between Chinese and Pakistani farming enterprises under CPEC.
But Masood said farmers had been kept in the dark over the exact contours of the deals being planned.
“Farmers at this stage don’t know whether Chinese will be leased out the agricultural land, or allowed to purchase vast tracts of the farming land,” Masood said. “If China grows crops in Pakistan to fulfil its growing food requirement and then simply exports them to Chinese markets from here, this will be of no benefit to the local farmers and the country’s economy.”
There are also concerns about how much input provincial governments will have in planning and implementing future agricultural cooperation deals. Most CPEC negotiations so far have been carried out by the federal government whereas, under the 18th amendment, agriculture is an exclusively provincial subject. 
Already, there are ever-increasing fears that energy and infrastructure deals signed under the CPEC portfolio were badly negotiated, too expensive or overly favored China. Now experts fear the same may happen with new agricultural contracts.
But Minister for Planning Khusro Bakhtyar said Pakistani farmers had nothing to fear, though he did not give any details of planned regulations to ensure greater equity in Pakistan’s arrangement with China.
“We will protect the interests of our local farmers at all costs,” he told Arab News. “Chinese cooperation will be sought in modernizing our agriculture, improving our supply chain and setting up of cold storages. Improvement in the agriculture sector remains our top priority and this is now going to be an important component of CPEC,” he added. 
The first phase of CPEC included mainly ports, power plants, roads, and railway projects. Ministry of Planning officials say the government now wants to focus on medium-term projects, expected to be completed by 2015, that include the agriculture sector and the establishment of industrial zones.
Some measures the Pakistan government could consider to secure the interests of its farmers include quotas for Pakistani laborers on Chinese-owned and operated farms and requirements that specific infrastructure projects such as post-harvest storage facilities be completed before Chinese enterprises are allowed to access Pakistani farmland. Economists and experts say Pakistan can increase its agrarian exports to China manifold in the coming years if it succeeds in removing tariff and non-tariff barriers for agricultural trade.
Senior economist Dr. Athar Ahmad said China is the world’s largest importer of agricultural products and Pakistan can grab its due share of the pie by revising the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the two countries.
He said China’s annual imports of agricultural products are over $160 billion while “Pakistan’s share in these exports is negligible.”
“We will have to diversify our agriculture by using modern techniques and technology to increase our exports to China,” Ahmad said.
Pakistan’s agriculture sector has long been hindered by water scarcity, energy shortages, and poor post-harvest infrastructure which result in about half of the country’s perishable produce going to waste before it reaches the market.
Chinese investment in the agriculture sector can help address these issues if “the government takes a strong position in negotiations with Chinese authorities and tries to get maximum benefits for its farmers,” business editor Khurram Husain told Arab News.
He said Pakistani agriculture needed foreign investment, modern technology in harvesting and even cold storage to improve its poor agricultural supply chain.
“From use of pesticides and fertilizers to new seed varieties and especially post-harvesting handling of both perishable and non-perishable items and transportation, we are far behind in all these things,” Hussain said. “If we can improve our harvesting and post-harvesting handling just in fruit and vegetables, we can double output, but to what extent the Chinese can help, this all depends on our government’s negotiating power.”