From Arifwala to Cholistan, Okara to the banks of the Indus, Pakistan’s peasant struggle is a fight for life itself. In a dynamic, multi-front movement, it pits two visions of agriculture against each other—one of extraction and control, and one of justice, dignity, and resilience. What’s at stake is not only land, but the future of food, communities, and sovereignty.
As the morning sun rose over Ehsan Pur Seed Farm in Kot Addu, Punjab, on April 10, 2025, peasant farmers were quietly harvesting wheat in their fields—land they and their families have cultivated for generations without a formal title. But now, the government is attempting to displace them for corporate investors and agribusiness transnational corporations, and the peasants push back. A court-issued stay order barred authorities from carrying out evictions while the case remained under litigation. Yet that sunny April morning, local officials, accompanied by police, stormed the fields. Without warning or formal charges, two farmers were arrested and their tractors seized—retaliation for resisting displacement.
Word spread quickly. By midday, a wave of resistance swept through the region. Families, elders, and youth flooded the roads in protest, forming a blockade and demanding the immediate release of the arrested farmers and the return of their essential harvest equipment. Faced with public outrage and mounting pressure, the authorities were forced to retreat. The farmers were released. The machinery was returned. It was a rare, if small, victory—but one that symbolised a much larger and intensifying struggle for land, dignity, and survival in Pakistan’s countryside.
This moment—just one of many—captures the core of a growing conflict unfolding across rural and urban Pakistan. Throughout the country, control over land, water, seeds, and other natural resources is exercised for large-scale monoculture production. Peasants, women, and rural youth stand in solidarity with defiance in their eyes and resistance in their bodies, while they build their collective resilience through agroecology and seed sovereignty.
Farooq Tariq, general secretary of the national peasant organisation Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC, a member of La Via Campesina), stated: “The government is reinforcing a new feudal system—where land remains concentrated in a few elite hands and peasants are reduced to precarious labour—by promoting military-backed corporate farming. Instead of empowering landless peasants through genuine land reforms and redistribution, this model displaces peasants and cultivators and replaces them with contracted farm workers under exploitative conditions. It entrenches control, while stripping rural communities of autonomy and land-based livelihoods.”
The green grab disguised as development and food security
Across the fertile plains of Punjab and Sindh, a new wave of state-sanctioned land dispossession is underway. Under the banner of the Green Pakistan Initiative (GPI)—a project launched in July 2023 to promote the corporatisation of agriculture—the government and military are facilitating the takeover of millions of hectares of farmland. At the heart of this land grab is the Land Information & Management System (LIMS). This digital mapping project uses GIS, drones, and satellite imagery to classify communal and peasant-cultivated lands as ‘barren’ or ‘unused’. Under this technocratic justification, ancestral lands are transferred to corporate entities for industrial agriculture, which is portrayed as more ‘productive’ and in the ‘national interest’.
Peasants stand in solidarity with defiance in their eyes and resistance in their bodies
Under GPI, 4.8 million acres (1.94 million hectares) of land have been earmarked for corporate farming. The lack of transparency surrounding these deals raises serious concerns about accountability and the unchecked expansion of military control over civilian resources. Additionally, the proposed construction of six new canals along the Indus River threatens to divert vital water resources, further exacerbating water scarcity for small farmers in downstream provinces such as Sindh and southern Punjab. Peasant groups denounce these projects as extractive and anti-people.
Vasand Thari, president of Awami Tahreek Sindh (People’s Movement Sindh), remarked: “This is not just about canals. It’s about saving Sindh’s land, water, and minerals from exploitative entities like the Green Corporate Initiative Pvt. Ltd.—a modern-day East India Company. These canals will serve export-oriented industrial farming. Food will be shipped to the Gulf and Global North countries, while increasing hunger and deprivation at home.”
Colonial laws, corporate profits
These takeovers are based on colonial-era laws, such as the Colonization of Lands Act (1912) and the Land Acquisition Act (1894), which permit governments to displace communities in the name of ‘public interest’. Even after decades of cultivation, peasants are denied land titles and legal recognition.
A stark example is Okara Military Farms, where, since the early 2000s, peasants have resisted military attempts to privatise land that has been cultivated for generations. Their enduring slogan— “Ownership or Death”—speaks to the existential nature of this fight. Between 2000 and 2019, at least 13 activists were killed and over 2,000 were arrested.
Today, 51% of rural households are landless. Just five percent of landlords control 64% of farmland, while 65% of farmers own only 15% of land. Corporate farming threatens to accelerate this inequality, rendering even more small farmers landless, adding to the 30 million already without land. Women are doubly marginalised, owning only three percent of land and facing systemic exclusion from land rights, credit, and recognition.
Combining peasant resistance and grassroots resilience
Peasant resistance in Pakistan is not only growing—it is evolving into a dynamic, multi-front movement that includes legal battles, grassroots organising, direct action, and global solidarity. On April 13, 2025, peasant and small farmers’ movements, along with workers and trade unions, launched a nationwide day of mobilisation across Punjab and Sindh. From village assemblies to town hall meetings, these coordinated actions openly rejected the Green Pakistan Initiative’s corporate farmland leases and canal construction projects. One of the most significant expressions of this resistance occurred at the Bhakkar Convention on May 6, 2025, where hundreds of landless peasants—including women and youth—gathered with peasant movements, agricultural workers, and allied trade unions to denounce corporate land grabs and demand structural and popular agrarian reform.
Beyond protest, peasants are engaging in bold, direct actions. In Sindh’s Babarloi region, peasant movements, lawyers, and community groups staged a nearly two-week sit-in (April 18–29, 2025), blocking major highways to stop canal construction tied to the Green Pakistan Initiative. Their pressure led to the suspension of the project by the Council of Common Interests. Meanwhile, in Arifwala and Hasilpur, thousands of peasants physically resisted police attempts to seize farmlands, chanting “We will not leave,” as they defended land cultivated for generations. These are not isolated acts of defiance—they represent a growing strategy of civil disobedience rooted in land justice.
Muhammad Ikhlaq, a Peasant from Arifwala and local organizer of the Punjab Landless Peasants Association, declared: “For over a century, we have cultivated this land with our blood and toil—yet we are denied ownership. The state now wants to hand over our homes and fields to corporations. We resisted their police, and we will continue to resist their oppression. This land is ours, and we will not surrender it. Peasants and small farmers’ movements condemn corporate farming as a ‘scheme of economic genocide against peasants’ and vow to intensify resistance.”
Resilience-building education
Equally important is the resilience-building grassroots educational work unfolding across rural communities. Women and youth are increasingly taking leadership roles through agroecology and political education programmes coordinated by small-scale food producer organisations and community networks. Together, they are cultivating a new generation of politically aware food producers, deeply grounded in agroecology, climate justice, and peasant feminism.
Women and community networks are leading workshops and village learning circles, promoting agroecological farming techniques—such as natural pest management, soil regeneration, and kitchen gardening—while simultaneously raising awareness about the politics of agriculture: women’s unpaid contributions to farm labour, the health and ecological dangers of chemical pesticides, and the right to safe, chemical-free food.
Agroecology and seed sovereignty are central pillars of resistance and resilience. Peasant and small farmers’ movements promote natural, non-corporate farming methods, rejecting chemical inputs, hybrid GMO seeds, and monoculture. Women-led networks are reviving ancestral seed varieties, preserving agro-biodiversity, and reclaiming food systems from corporate biotech monopolies. These efforts aim not only to protect the land but to redefine the very model of development imposed on rural communities, enhancing community autonomy and resilience.
Women and youth are increasingly taking leadership roles through agroecology and political education
In rural areas of Pakistan, women are deeply involved in dairy farming. As the agribusiness corporations increasingly capture the dairy sector, it has become essential for small and landless farmer movements to organize women through local community networks. Some of these women are now joining men to establish farms run on agroecological principles and taking the lead in collecting and regenerating traditional seeds. They are working to maintain community seed banks so that wheat, rice, maize, and vegetable seeds are grown not only for their own use but also for exchange among neighboring farmers. While a few women own land directly, many work on their family farms—yet they are central to the preservation of seed sovereignty and the defense of local food systems.
Legal resistance remains a critical tool. Peasant movements and farmer groups have secured court-ordered stays from the Lahore High Court against illegal land seizures, forced evictions, and machinery confiscations. Even in the face of state efforts to override these rulings, peasants have stood firm. Alongside legal advocacy, popular rural assemblies continue to call for the repeal of colonial-era land acquisition laws and for comprehensive agrarian reform that centers the rights of the landless.
Land, life and liberation
The movement against corporate farming and the canal projects is bolstered by solidarity across sectors. Peasants have forged strong ties with progressive political parties, labour rights groups, journalists, lawyers, and international allies— but these relationships didn’t emerge overnight—they were forged through years of consistent engagement, mutual support in moments of crisis, and a clear articulation of shared struggles. When peasants faced arrests or violent evictions, they reached out to lawyers’ groups for legal defense and injunctions; in return, these lawyers became embedded allies, shaping legal arguments for land rights. Journalists were invited to on-site visits and people’s tribunals, ensuring that stories of dispossession were documented and made visible in mainstream and alternative media.
Progressive political parties and labour unions were engaged through joint mobilisations, co-signed statements, and common struggles—recognising that land grabs, wage exploitation, and privatisation are all facets of the same system of dispossession. Internationally, groups like Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) leveraged their involvement in La Via Campesina to link local struggles to the global food sovereignty movement, creating reciprocal solidarity.
These actions are strengthening community resilience in profound ways. Organising for resistance and resilience has unified previously disconnected rural communities, fostering solidarity and social cohesion that are vital for withstanding state repression and negotiating with authorities.
By defending land rights and pushing back against forced contract changes or evictions while at the same time building autonomous agroecological production systems, peasants are gaining greater resource security, which translates into more stable access to livelihoods and food, and less vulnerability to poverty and climate shocks. The ongoing struggle is also driving political consciousness among rural populations, enabling broader and more confident participation in governance, advocacy, and rights-based organising. Peasant actions are also promoting ecological resilience. Secure tenure and collective ownership motivate small farmers to engage in agroecological land use practices, investing in long-term soil health and biodiversity instead of short-term profit, which is often a necessity under insecure tenancy.
In resisting externally imposed policies—such as forced crop changes, monocultures, or GMO seed imports—peasants are defending both traditional farming systems and ecological diversity, contributing to healthier ecosystems and a more climate-resilient rural landscape.
Author: Qammar Abbas is a peasant rights activist who also works on his family farm in southern Punjab, Pakistan. He is a youth representative of Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee – PKRC (Pakistan Peasants Coordination Committee) and part of its Central Coordination Committee. Qammar represents PKRC in La Via Campesina and is an active member of LVC’s International Youth Articulation. Contact: qammarabbaskpr@gmail.com
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This article is part of Issue 3-2025: Weaving Resilience and Resistance
