Sustainable Agriculture and Eradication of Rural Poverty Engr. Abdul Waheed Bhutto

Introduction
In Pakistan, the disparity in incidence of poverty in urban and rural areas, and the higher rate of increase in poverty in the rural areas has prompted debate on growth and productivity trends in the agriculture sector. Although growth in agriculture averaged over 4 percent per year from Facial Year (FY) 1993 to FY1999, the incidence of poverty in rural areas is estimated to have increased by over 7 percentage points in this period [1].

Poverty is rampant in the rural areas, where the people are in a state of human deprivation with regard to incomes, clothing, housing, health care, education, sanitary facilities and human rights. Due to increasing population, natural resources are gradually depleting posing major constraints on the efforts to eradicate poverty. The problems, complex and enormous, are declining availability of agricultural land and agricultural workforce, marginal producers with small land holdings, decreasing per capita land availability, conflicting demands for scarce water resource, urbanization and youth evading traditional farming. In the coming years, Pakistan will require to produce food for larger populations from less and less land. The biggest challenge is how to increase output from the shrinking agricultural sector, while sustaining the productivity potential of the available natural resources.

According to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Pakistan is required to reduce poverty by half by 2015 from the level of the 1990. The country is committed to pursuing this target along other MDG targets. Achieving MDG targets requires monitoring and analysis of poverty trends. To assess the state of poverty, Planning Commission of the Government of Pakistan has notified an official poverty line based on a caloric norm of 2350 calories per adult equivalence per day. This poverty line approximated to Rs.748.56 per month per adult equivalence in 2000-01[2].

Population Growth
During the last 50 years, Pakistan's population has increased from 33 million to 152.53 million in 2004-05, thus making Pakistan the 7th most populous country in the world. Pakistan's population has grown at an average rate of three percent per annum since 1951 and until mid 1980's. Population growth slowed to an average rate of 2.6 percent per annum between 1985-86 and 1999-2000. Since 2000-01 Pakistan's population is growing at an average rate of almost two percent per annum. The current population growth rate is 1.9 percent per annum; but this is still considerably high compared to the average of 0.9 percent for the developed countries and 1.7 percent for the developing countries [2].

The implications of such a rapid population proliferation are grave and multifaceted. It has adversely fostered the process of sub-division and fragmentation of farmlands and added to the fragile and marginal lands by denudation of forests and rangelands. There is a massive migration from rural to urban areas.

The increase in population, as a result has led to an increase in labour force. This is evident from Pakistan's labour force figure of 45.76 million in 2004 as compared to total labour force figure of 40.5 million in 2000. There is an increase of 5.27 million working hands in Pakistan. The agriculture sector has absorbed 17.97 million of the total employed labour force [3].

Role of Agriculture in Economy Agriculture accounts for nearly 23 percent of Pakistan's national income (GDP) and employs 42 percent of its workforce and accounts for nearly nine percent of the country's export earnings [2]. Moreover, this sector provides raw material to domestic agro-based industries, such as sugar, ghee, leather, and textiles. Hence, the importance of agriculture to the economic growth of Pakistan and the well being of its people cannot be overstated. Most importantly, 67.5 percent of country's population living in rural areas is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. Agro-based industries account for 64 percent of the total industrial production of Pakistan [4]. The agriculture sector is, thus, a major determinant of the overall economic growth and well-being of people in Pakistan. In addition to the direct impact of agriculture growth on poverty reduction, there is also a much larger indirect effect through the linkages between agriculture and non-farm growth in rural areas. Non-farm growth is closely linked with agricultural growth since peasant farmers spend a large portion of their incremental income on locally produced non-agricultural goods thus generating employment and incomes in the adjoining areas. The increased demand for non-farm goods leads to a much larger increase in employment, which is a key vehicle for poverty reduction.

Until the late 1960s, Pakistan was surplus in production of food items and as such had enjoyed a favourable balance of trade for being net exporter of food products as well as cash crops and thereafter this position was retained intermittently for a short time. Since early eighties due to water shortage and frequent natural calamities like floods, import of food items has become indispensable. The average growth rate, for agriculture, over the 1990s, was 4.54 percent per annum. This is lower than the average of the 1980s. Agricultural output, over the 1990s seems to have been more variable, from year to year, than in the 1980s. Though the growth rate was a bit lower, it was not bad on the whole, and apart from one year (1992-93), never negative as shown in Table-1 [2, 4, 5]. There were only two years (1996-97 and 1998-99), in the 1990s, when growth was less than two percent. The country witnessed unprecedented drought during the 2000-01 and 2001-02, which resulted in contraction of value addition in agriculture. In other words, agriculture registered negative growth in these two years. The next two years (2002-03 and 2003-04) witnessed a modest recovery in agricultural growth at the back of improvement in the availability of water for irrigation purpose. A stranger performance of agriculture has been hallmark of the FY 2004-05 with growth reaching as high as 7.5 percent on account of unprecedented increase in cotton production (14.6 million bales) and a near bumper wheat crop of the size of 21.1 million tons[2].

Poverty
Poverty means hunger, lack of medical treatment, and poor access to basic services such as electricity and water supply. It means being unable to send children to school, and often needing them to work instead. The Planning Commission of Pakistan has adopted an official poverty line based on a caloric norm of 2350 calories per adult per day and minimum non-food requirements. This poverty line approximates Rs. 673.54 per month per adult in 1998-99, rising to RS. 748.56 in 2000-01. [2]

Trends in Rural Poverty
Poverty increased in rural areas during the 1960s despite high growth rates in agriculture. The initial beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies in the 1960s were generally large farmers. Hence, the increased agricultural growth could not be translated into reduced levels of poverty.

The 1970s were marked by the decreasing incidence of rural poverty. Private investment in agriculture reached its peak. There was also very heavy out-migration from the rural areas, resulting in increased foreign remittances, a major reason behind falling poverty trends in the country . Declining trends in poverty continued in the 1980s, largely due to the inflow of remittances and the relatively better performance of the agriculture sector [6].

Despite the fairly robust performance of agriculture over the 1990s, where its growth rates stayed above the population growth rates and were fairly reasonable, rural poverty increased significantly. In 1990-91, rural poverty, according to government Head Count Figures, stood at 25.2 percent [See Table-1]. By 2000-01, the figure had gone up to 38.99 percent. This is a massive increase of almost 15 percent. In other words, for every hundred people, fifteen more people slipped into poverty over this period [7]. In April 2004, the Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) had conducted a sample Survey of Household Consumption Expenditure (HCES). The findings of the Survey suggests that the rising trends in poverty have been arrested and that a reversal has begun to take shape [2]. (This survey is not much reliable. Editor)

Household income distribution for rural areas shows that over the 1990s the share of the lowest 20 percent of the households, in the overall income, decreased from 8.8 percent to 6.9 percent. At the same time the share of the top 20 percent of households increased from 40 percent to about 47 percent by 1998-99. The Gini Coefficient, a measure of inequality, also increased significantly over the same period [see Table No-02] [7]. So even though rural incomes were increasing in the 1990s, there were increasing distributional asymmetries that were also coming in. The rich, in rural areas, continued to get richer, while the rural poor became poorer. These figures do show that the share of the middle classes has also gone down. If these trends were the same for rural as well as urban areas, we could surmise that the rural middle strata also suffered relative losses over the 1990s.

The government, over the 1990s cut subsidies in agricultural inputs. Fertilizer, pesticide and seed markets were hit by these cuts directly. The government also increased the price of infrastructure over the same period. The price of fuel, electricity and water went up. These are all agricultural inputs. This might have affected the cost of production and income levels. The Federal Bureau of Statistics (FBS) finds that rural poverty fluctuated during the 1990s but that by FY2001, the incidence of poverty was considerably higher than in the early 1990s. The percentage of rural persons living below the poverty line has increased over time and especially since the late 1990s [3]. According to the Planning Commission, as much as 63 percent of the poor population falls between the poverty line and a level of consumption that is equivalent to 75 percent of the poverty line [8]. Poverty in Pakistan is characterized by large amounts of clustering around the poverty line. This suggests that there exists a high proportion of poverty vulnerable population as a result of changing economic conditions. This underscores the importance of looking at a range around the poverty line, rather than a fixed head count number, for devising an appropriate poverty reduction strategy as well as for assessing the impact of policy changes.

Poverty Reduction Strategy
In the past 20 years, the country has generated economic growth and strengthened its macro-economic indicators by implementing macro-economic reforms. Like many other developing countries, Pakistan has also made significant efforts to integrate its economy with the rest of the world by lowering tariffs and taking measures to open economy for investment. The performance of the economy remained dismal in the 1990s which caused poverty to rise. However, knowingthe rising trends in poverty during the 1990s, the Government of Pakistan adopted a strategy for poverty reduction in 2001. The poverty reduction strategy of the government focuses mainly on the five areas which include i) accelerating economic growth and maintaining macroeconomic stability; ii) investing in human capital; iii) augmenting targeted interventions; iv) expanding social safety nets and v) improving governance [9].

Land Reform and Security of Land Tenure
Landlessness and the limited access to land is a glaring feature of rural poverty. It is also the foremost characteristic, as much else influencing rural poverty depends on the access to productive assets. The poor households in all the countries studied had a larger family size with a greater dependency ratio. Land distribution in Pakistan is much skewed. Farms less than 5 hectares in size account for about 81 percent of farmers who owned only 38.7 percent of the total farm area. Large farmers of more than 10 hectares comprised only 6.8 percent of all farmers accounting for 39.8 percent of the farm area. Table-3[10] shows the agricultural land distribution by farm size. The much skewed distribution of the size of farm holdings is very striking. The small farms (up to 2 ha. in size) comprising (7.5 percent of all the farms account for only 11.2 percent of the total land area. On the other hand, the large farms (over 10 ha.) which comprise only 6.8 percent of all farms account for 39.8 percent of the total farm area. Small farmers will naturally prefer farming systems that are more labour intensive and less risky, while big farmers would prefer farming systems that are more intensive in capital and they can afford to take risks in the hope of higher returns. Unequal land distribution, crop failures, discriminating access to capital and resources are farm-size specific. The lesser the size of farm, the greater is the loss. The increase in population is proportionate to the decrease in the number and large and middle sized farms.

Poverty and Land degradation The impact of population on agricultural production includes less land per capita, more intensive use of land, and higher dependency ratios per household and income generation (and thus poverty). The two most important driving forces behind the land degradation in Pakistan are limited land resources and increase in population. The result is small farms, low production per person and increasing landlessness. A consequence of land shortage is increase in landlessness of peasantry and poverty. Land shortage and poverty, taken together, lead to non-sustainable land management practices, the direct cause of degradation. Poor farmers are forced to clear forest, cultivate steep slopes without conservation, overgraze rangelands and make unbalanced fertilizer applications. Land degradation then leads to reduced productivity: a lower response to the same inputs or, where farmers possess the resources, a need for higher inputs to maintain crop yields and farm incomes. This increases land shortage thus accentuating the cycle.

Additional Land under Cultivation
Out of 79.6 million hectares area of the country, only 20 million hectares are available for farming [11]. Irrigated agriculture is practiced on 16 million hectares and the remaining 4 million hectares are under rain fed (Barani) farming. A sizeable chunk of the landmass, about 31 million hectares, is under forests and rangelands and /or remains untapped. The land use data for the last decade shows that the total area under cultivation remained static. The government emphasis is on bringing additional land under cultivation through provision of adequate and efficiently managed water resources. According to Economic Survey of Pakistan 2004-05[2], the government investment in on-going water-related projects will bring an additional 2.88 million acres of land under irrigation and 4.44 million feet of additional water in the next 2-3 years. the government is expecting that it will boost agriculture output, productivity and employment in rural areas in a sustained manner and will help reduce poverty, particularly in rural areas.

Technological Developments in Agriculture
Current globalization has affected all the countries with an aggressive market based economy. The industrial sector is dominating and agriculture is getting commercialized due to private sector investment. The technologies are generated based on demand. These technologies may not be within the reach of the small farmers and the old technologies are also getting outdated as the products are not of the right quality to compete in the new global markets. Improved crop varieties could easily be adopted by small farmers, but it may not be the case with other technologies such as irrigation, machinery, high tech agriculture etc. These are more favourable to commercial farmers, and then the poor may not adopt them or with a long time lag when conditions become unfavourable.

The poorer farmers should acquire knowledge and skills so that the new technology could benefit them. A study in India [12] has indicated that the technologies generally benefit the poor after a time lag. Even the green revolution technologies, which had initially gone against the poor, have benefited them later on. Therefore, the benefits of technology will accrue to the second generation and not to those who are in the grip of poverty. This indicates that research should be targeted towards the poor farmers over short term as well as for long term development. This cast some light on the research - poverty alleviation linkage.

Agricultural research has led to significant increases in productivity and enhanced incomes in developing countries [13]. The development of improved cultivators and management practices, mechanization, improved plant nutrition and crop protection technologies have been in the forefront of agricultural technologies contributing to increased crop yields in many developing countries. The green revolution, which predominated in the early 1960s contributed to unprecedented increases in food production, wheat and rice yields increased by several folds. In the seventies due to the impact of green revolution the incidence of rural poverty declined as agricultural growth and purchasing power of the people rose. Advances in agricultural science and technology has increased productivity, hence it will be an important drive to improve food and nutritional security and reducing the number of poor.

Promotion of Agriculture for Poverty Eradication
Development economists say that industrialization cannot achieve the goal of prosperity without the simultaneous transformation of the agricultural sector, the source of sustenance of the bulk of the nation's people [14]. Therefore, in the presence of an ever increasing population a rise in agricultural/food productivity is imperative to support the growing needs of the people. Even though the last decade has seen a concentration of development in the urban manufacturing sector, Pakistan is still essentially an agricultural economy.

Agriculture plays an important role in economic development, such as provision of food to the nation, increase in exports, transfer of manpower to non-agricultural sectors, contribution to capital formation, and securing markets for industrialization. Improvement in agricultural productivity is answer to the realization of each of these goals. Historical records have shown that agricultural productivity has been growing due to introduction of modern technologies, commercialization of agriculture, increased availability of capital, factor shifts from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors, etc. This whole process could be called 'agricultural transformation,' to which the contribution of each of these factors has been quantified in the existing literature.

Over the past several decades, there has been increasing acceptance worldwide that rapid economic growth over a prolonged period is essential for poverty reduction. At the macro level, economic growth implies greater availability of public resources to improve the quantity and quality of education, health and other services. At the micro level, economic growth creates employment opportunities, increases the income of the people and, therefore, reduces poverty. Economic growth also benefits the poor, but not always unless effective measures are taken focusing the poor and directly empowering them. Therefore, rapid growth is vital, but it has to be sustained and targeted for a meaningful reduction in poverty. Many developing countries have succeeded in boosting growth for a short period. But only those that have achieved higher economic growth over a long period have seen a lasting reduction in poverty East Asia is a classic example of lasting reduction in poverty. A vibrant agriculture in Pakistan is central to the wellbeing of the largest and most rapidly growing section of the population living in approximately 45,000 rural villages [15], as well as for the welfare of the urban population and those working in agro-industrial enterprises.

Rising population, shrinking agricultural land, increasing demand on limited water resources, from the expanding industrial and urban sectors, widespread land degradation and inadequacy of infrastructure appear to be major concerns now than ever before. To feed the increasing population adequately, it is estimated that food production has to double within the next 30 years. Meeting this demand will require rapid increase in productivity and product diversification to ensure broad based economic growth capable of improving the livelihoods of the poor. Therefore, agriculture and rural development should receive priority and policies and appropriate technologies will have to play a dominant role for the uplift of the poor. The efficiency of production, which is substantially low [see Table No: 04] has to be improved for growth and the wellbeing of the poor, through the use of appropriate technologies. It is short-sighted of the Pakistan's government to focus solely on poverty alleviation policies.

Researchers in environmental economics, demographics and population studies are generally in agreement that improvements in agricultural productivity will break the population poverty- environmental degradation cycle [16].

The first aim of the government of Pakistan should be to enhance the productivity of the agricultural sector through the provision of required capital inputs which would speed up the transformation process. These inputs range from efficient provision of easy credit to the small farmers, availability of unadulterated fertilizer and pesticide, tractor and harvester services, improvement in the effectiveness of the vast irrigation system, utilization of cultivable wastes and finally farmer's education. The high rate of population growth needs to be checked for increased agricultural productivity to have any significant effect on poverty. The prices of inputs in the production process have to be rationalized to reduce the costs of cultivation, which inevitably push up food prices. The development of the agro-business and the service sector in the rural areas is imperative to absorb the pressure of surplus labour. Lastly, the existence of the powerful informal sector with the large land holders exerting the control over the rural labour and capital market has to be abolished for the transformation mechanisms were to have any effect in the first place. All measures that are supposed to alleviate poverty must target the poor strata, providing them with the means of living, helping them build productive assets and generating income.

Unsuitable rules for acquiring access to land can lead to environmental degradation (For example, clearing the land has become an effective way to lay claim to it). Thus, the implementation of the Pakistan's government's land capitalization policy will put pressure on the environment quality since some land in the capitalization project is in the forest reserve and other protected areas. However, environmental degradation has not been at the centre of any government policies in the past decade. The impact of government policy should be examined, since it will not only affect the well-being of the poor, but also the quality of natural resources and environment. In short, inter-linkages exist between population, poverty and the environment, but to date, the government has focused solely on poverty reduction, without regard to population or the environment.

In the light of increasingly limited income generating opportunities in the on-farm sector, poor households are increasingly turning to the non-farm sector as a key source of livelihood. In addition, there appears to be a higher incidence of vulnerability to falling into and remaining in poverty, among households which are dependent solely on agriculture. Rural areas that are well connected with the urban areas seem to be more prosperous, in part because the lack of employment opportunities in rural areas results either in labour reallocation or migration. In both cases, human capital plays a positive and significant role and the poorest of the poor neither possess the human capital nor have the resources to migrate. This vulnerable group needs special attention.

The dilemma of Pakistan's poverty reduction strategy is that it is aimed at poverty reduction without boosting agriculture. The spread of irrigation network and modern farming techniques are still missing in the policy packages. Pakistan needs better water management and efficient utilization of water resources for greater welfare of the entire society in general and agriculture in particular.

A successful strategy for alleviating poverty and hunger in developing countries must begin by recognizing that they are mainly rural phenomena and that agriculture is at the heart of the livelihoods of rural people. Pakistan has great potential in agriculture and should keep on working on the Agriculture development, which is crucial for poverty reduction. All our poverty reduction strategies should primarily focus on development of agriculture sector for the sake of the poor and industrialization for employment generation and thus reduction of poverty. Other issues that need to be addressed are, (i) Soil erosion and degradation; (ii) Inappropriate fertilizer and pesticide use; (iii) Inadequate availability of quality seed; (iv) Inadequate markets infrastructure; (v)Non availability of adequate farm power; (vi)Weakness of agricultural research and extension services.

Land reforms should ensure equitable access to productive resources and restruct rural society and polity on egalitarian line. Such efforts have met with varying degree of success in different countries depending on the correlation of socio-political forces.

Development of irrigation, rural electrification and rural roads and transport should receive a high priority in the development plans of the country, giving impetus to the growth of agriculture and rural industries, raising the incomes of small farmers and artisans and increasing the employment opportunities for the rural poor, in general. This trend in agricultural growth could increase income and reduce poverty among the farmers. However, if left alone to the market forces this may not happen.

Agricultural technologies and techniques are constantly changing and farmers need to be made aware of and know how to use agricultural innovations for the exploitation of inherent yield potentials. Seed technologies have benefited the rich than the poor. As evident in the Asian countries the shift into cash cropping will press farmers to sacrifice their own food crops and lead to more food insecurity. All areas with favourable conditions will benefit and worsen the regional inequities. This will bring about some discrepancies in the effort to reduce poverty in all the developing nations.

Most small farmers are unable to use the facility of cost free loans because of the cumbersome procedures for transacting a bank loan even if it is interest free. The co-operative banking system is still very weak extending loans to farmers, and recover them. Consequently, the influential farmers tend to dominate the co-operative organizations at the apex level.

Conclusion
The analysis brings out the correlation between the incidence of rural poverty, access to land, population growth and agricultural growth. Agriculture continues to be one of the most important sectors of our economy, and will be so for some years to come. It employs a majority of our workforce, and if we want to have any impact on poverty levels in rural areas, agriculture has to be the main vehicle for accessing the poor. Agriculture also has the potential for addressing unemployment, for the medium run at least, as it has higher employment elasticity than industry. A vibrant agriculture in Pakistan is central to the well being of the largest and most rapidly growing section of the population living in approximately 45,000 rural villages.

Rising population, shrinking agricultural land, increasing demand on limited water resources, from the expanding industrial and urban sectors, widespread land degradation and inadequacy of governing infrastructure appear to be major concerns now. So, agriculture and rural development should receive a top priority. The efficiency of production, which is substantially low, is required to be improved for the being well of the poor, through the use of appropriate technologies.

Pakistan should enhance the productivity of the agriculture sector through the provision of the required capital inputs to speed up transformation. These inputs range from efficient provision of easy credit to the small farmer, availability of unadulterated fertilizer and pesticide, tractor and harvester services, improvement in the effectiveness of the vast irrigation system, utilization of cultivable wastes and finally farmer education. The high rate of population growth needs to be checked for the increased agricultural productivity to have any significant effect on poverty.

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Engr. Abdul Waheed Bhutto is an assistant professor at Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan

References

1. Chapter 2-Poverty Profile <www.finance.gov.pk/poverty/iprsp_2.pdf >
2. Government of Pakistan “Economic Survey of Pakistan: 2004-2005”, Islamabad: Ministry of Finance (2005).
3. Government of Pakistan “Labor Force Survey”, Islamabad: Bureau of Statistics Ministry of Finance (2001).
4. Government of Pakistan “Economic Survey of Pakistan: 2000-2001”, Islamabad: Ministry of Finance (2001).
5. Government of Pakistan Economic Survey of Pakistan 1999-00: Statistical Supplement, Islamabad: Ministry of Finance (2001).
6. Malik, Sohail J. “Agricultural Growth and Rural Poverty: A Review of the Evidence”. Pakistan Resident Mission Working Paper No.2-Asian Development Bank. Islamabad: 2005.
7. Dr. Faisal Bari “Growth and Poverty Paradox” The Journal, Vol-8 No.4, NIPA Karachi, Dec. 2003.
8. Government of Pakistan “Accelerating Economic Growth and Reducing Poverty: The Road Ahead” Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper -Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan December 2003.
9. Government of Pakistan “Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper: Progress Report for the First Quarter of Year 2004-05” PRSP Secretariat - Finance Division Government of Pakistan. Islamabad December 2004.
10. United Nations “United Nations Statement on Food Security in Pakistan” The United Nations System in Pakistan Publication No. UN-PAK/FAO/2000/1-Islamabad, Pakistan.
11. Chapter-1 Introduction< http://www.pakistan.gov.pk/divisions/environment-division/media/Chapter_1_napchp.pdf >
12. Chadha, G.K.(2002). Indian agriculture in the new millennium. Human response to technology challenge. Presidential Address, 62nd Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Agricultural Economics. December 19 21, New Delhi, India.
13. Lipton, Michel and Richard Longhurst .(1989). New seeds and poor people. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins Press.
14. Southworth, H. M & Johnston, B. F., Agricultural Development and Economic Growth. Cornell University Press, Ithaca & London: 1967.
15. Andrew P. Davidson, Munir Ahmad, Tanvir Ali “Dilemmas of Agricultural Extension in Pakistan: Food for Thought” Network Paper No. 116, Agricultural Research & Extension Network, July 2001.
16. Coxhead, I. and S. Jayasuriya (1994), “Technical Change in Agriculture and Land Degradation in Developing Countries: a General Equilibrium Analysis”, Land Economics, 70(1): 20-38.

Suggested Reading

1. Alain De Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet “World Poverty and the Role of Agricultural Technology: Direct and Indirect Effects” Journal of Development Studies- June 2001.
2. Jim Harvey “Better livelihoods for poor people: The role of Agriculture” Issues Paper, Policy and Knowledge Section, Rural Livelihoods Department, Department for International Development, London- 2002.
3. S. M. Turab Hussain and Mohammad Ishfaq “Dynamics of Agricultural Productivity and Poverty in Pakistan” Working Paper No. 97-14, Centre for Management and Economic Research; Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan, 1997. <www.lums.edu.pk/cmer>
4. D.S. Prasada Rao, Timothy J. Coelli and Mohammad Alauddin “Agricultural productivity growth, employment and poverty in developing countries, 1970-2000” Employment Strategy Papers-Centre for Efficiency and Productivity Analysis (CEPA) School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia. Sept-2004.
5. World Bank “Pakistan- Joint Staff Assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper” World Bank Report No. 27625-PK -February 12, 2004.
6. IUCN “Why is Sustainable Environment and Natural Resources Management Necessary for Poverty Alleviation in Pakistan?” Sustainable Environment and Natural Resources Management for Poverty Alleviation IUCN-The World Conservation Union, Pakistan -January 2002.
7. Professor H.P.M. Gunasena “Food and Poverty: Technologies for poverty elevation” South Asia Conference on Technologies for Poverty Reduction, New Delhi 10 -11 October, 2003.
8. World Bank “Pakistan- Joint Staff Assessment of the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper” World Bank Report No. 23189-PAK - November 15, 2001.
9. Asian Development Bank “technical Assistance to Islamic Republic of Pakistan on determinants and drivers of poverty reduction and ADB'S contribution in rural Pakistan” Asian Development Bank TAR: PAK 37711- March 2004.
10. Mian Tayyab Hassan “Governance and Poverty in Pakistan” MIMAP Technical paper Series .Pakistan Institution of Development Economics, Islamabad. December-13, 2002.
11. Asian Development Bank “Poverty in Pakistan- Issues, causes and Institutional Responses” Publication Stock No. 070302, Asian Development Bank Pakistan Resident Mission, Islamabad- JULY 2002.
12. Salim Rashid “Is land Reform Viable under Democratic Capitalism?” Published: 2000 <http://www.business.uiuc.edu/Working_Papers/papers/00-0127.pdf>
13. Bardhan P., and C. Udry (1999), Development Microeconomics, Oxford University Press, Somerset.
14. World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) (1987), Our Common Future, New York, Oxford University Press.
15. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2000. "Gender and Food Security: Division of Labor." Fact sheet 6. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Web site: <www.fao.org/Gender/en/lab-e.htm.>