Geography Practicing Organic Farming in Pakistan

This study takes the example of organic agriculture in Pakistan to illustrate how alternative agricultures emerge in times of agrarian crisis. Building on an integrative conceptual framework that combines insights from Science and Technology Studies, Political Ecology and food studies, the study highlights the importance of paying attention to distinct practices and the role of agricultural intermediaries in both local and global organic value chains. The unstandardized practices of seemingly standardized value chains highlights the significant contribution that qualitative and ethnographic methods can make to understand agriculture as a complex human-environment interaction. The fieldwork for this study was conducted in three field stays in Pakistan between 2013 and 2015. The research design followed a multi-sited approach to consider not only alternative practices on rural fields, but also in urban processing units and exporters’ offices. Pakistan currently faces a multiscale agrarian crisis, which manifests, among others, in the salinization of soils, unequal land ownership distribution, and an excessive use of synthetic farm inputs. Against the backdrop of these challenges, the farmers, experts and entrepreneurs, who were central to this study, seek solutions outside the realm of conventional practices that they hold responsible for the crisis. The study shows that, from an ecological perspective, organic agriculture seems to be a viable alternative for Pakistan’s degraded agro-ecological conditions. However, it also highlights that from a socioeconomic perspective, organic agriculture does not seem to offer adequate solutions to address the root causes of prevailing problems. Rather, organic agriculture appears to be a promising alternative mostly for wealthy farmers and middle-class consumers. On a conceptual level, this study contributes to a critical perspective on the processes and politics of knowledge production in agricultural science in Pakistan on the one hand and the implications of power structures in both international and local organic value chains on the other. Understanding the “alternativeness” of alternative gricultures requires considering the ontological and epistemological differences to understand how and for whom they become an alternative. 

PhD Candidate: Julia Poerting
Funding: Cluster of Excelence, Heidelberg University
Duration:

Poerting J (2017): Soziale Innovation oder Business as Usual? Zertifizierte Bio-Landwirtschaft in Nordpakistan. Geographische Zeitschrift 105:104–124

Münster D & Poerting J (2016) Land als Ressource, Boden und Landschaft: Materialität, Relationalität und neue Agrarfragen in der Politischen Ökologie. Geographica Helvetica 71:245–257. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-71-245-2016

Münster D, Poerting J & Dame J (2015): Agrarwirtschaft in Indien: Kleinbauern zwischen Krise und neuen Perspektiven. Geographische Rundschau 16–22