The recently released report of Pakistan’s 7th Agricultural Census 2024 reveals a noticeable trend of shrinking farm sizes. The average size has fallen from 6.4 acres in 2010 to 5.1 acres in 2024. Over the same period, the number of farms increased by 42 per cent — from 8.26 million to 11.7m. This shift is hardly surprising in a country with the region’s highest population growth rate of 2.55pc.
Among several factors, generational inheritance and the unchecked sprawl of housing colonies across cities and towns are two major drivers of farmland fragmentation. Therefore, one thing is certain: the trend is likely to intensify in the years ahead, due to exponential population growth and growing urbanisation.
However, the fundamental question is whether the continuing reduction in farm sizes aligns with the natural evolution of Pakistan’s agriculture sector.
Until just a few decades ago, farming in Pakistan relied heavily on oxen for almost every task — from ploughing fields and lifting water from wells to threshing wheat and transporting produce. In such a labour-intensive system, landlords had no choice but to keep tenants who owned a pair of oxen and could provide family labour, typically cultivating eight to 12 acres per family on a crop sharing basis.
Lacking enabling factors, smallholders struggle as farming evolves to large, capital-intensive enterprises
This partly explains why proponents of agrarian socialism (leftists) in Pakistan have consistently advocated reforms since 1947, calling for caps on landholdings and redistribution of surplus land to landless farmers that are actually doing the work.
Over the past two decades, however, rapid mechanisation has been transforming Pakistan’s agricultural landscape, especially in Punjab. Today, there is no dearth of farmers who can easily manage hundreds of acres with only a handful of employees, aided by machines such as combine harvesters, rice transplanters, corn planters, corn pickers, potato planters and diggers, laser land levellers, and even drones for pesticide spraying. Farming has thus evolved into a capital-intensive corporate enterprise, run on the same management principles as any other business.
This transformation has shaken the very foundations on which the leftists’ case for land reforms once rested. Landlords no longer need a large number of workers in general, and tenants in particular. As a result, the tenant system has, for the most part, disappeared from Punjab’s private farms. In this new dynamic, many passive or absentee landlords now prefer renting out their land rather than engaging tenants, unless they have any political motives.
With agriculture becoming increasingly capital-intensive, the sector is tilting in favour of large farms — a sharp reversal from the past. Small farms are now at a clear competitive disadvantage; their survival has become even harder as the government is gradually withdrawing agricultural subsidies and crop support prices.
Until a few decades ago, farming relied heavily on oxen for almost every task and landlords had no choice but to keep tenants with their own livestock who could provide family labour and cultivate 8-12 acres
Today, most smallholders can no longer afford even a tractor and a tubewell — the two most basic farming necessities. Their limited landholdings make such capital-intensive investments financially impractical due to underutilisation, compounded by their chronic financial constraints. In the absence of farmers’ cooperatives, they are left to rent tractors and buy irrigation water from neighbouring tubewells. Sadly, exorbitant machinery rental charges drive up their production costs.
This financial squeeze is aggravated by lower crop yields, as sizeable farms are better positioned to adopt mechanisation, use high-yielding expensive seeds, apply optimal quantities of inputs, and maximise land utilisation by reducing field corners and watercourses. Likewise, tractors and other machinery consume less time and fuel (per acre) when operating on larger fields.
Compounding the crisis, government policies — widely seen as anti-farmer — have further undermined the prospects of small farms. Input prices continue to rise, crop prices are falling, and climate change is driving a sharp decline in crop yields, all while farm sizes steadily shrink. Collectively, these pressures have eroded the economic viability of smallholdings and put the country’s broader agricultural productivity at serious risk.
Several countries — including India and Bangladesh — have smaller average farm sizes, yet their smallholders have managed to mechanise and prosper thanks to generous government subsidies, well-functioning cooperatives, and the adoption of appropriate technologies, such as walk-behind power tillers in Bangladesh.
In Pakistan, which lacks such enabling factors, reverse leasing — where smallholders rent out their land to larger farmers — has become increasingly common, particularly in Punjab. For many, it offers a safer and more profitable alternative to cultivating land on their own.
However, this is not the only option for smallholders, as two other potential survival strategies remain; the first is to shift towards labour-intensive, high-value crops, though this appears impractical given that nearly 7m farms — the vast majority — are under five acres. The second is to form organised cooperatives that pool machinery, purchase inputs in bulk, and market produce collectively to secure better margins.
Let us see what policy measures the government takes down the road to tackle this growing crisis.
Khalid Wattoo is a development professional and a farmer, and Dr Waqar Ahmad is a former associate professor at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad.
