In the fading light of the evening, the farm was a masterpiece of pastoral serenity. The sun, a molten gold disk descending behind ancient mangroves painted everything in honeyed hues. Lush fields rippled in the breeze -nature’s evening orchestra, the gentle lapping of lake waters against earth-packed shores, the distant calls of water birds returning to roost. Here, I thought, was Pakistan’s agricultural promise incarnate: a perfect tableau of sustainability, prosperity, and hope.
But the dawn is an unforgiving artist, stripping away evening’s gilded illusions with brutal honesty. What had seemed like dew-kissed earth showed sprawling patches of salt-stained soil, white and sterile, spreading like a slow disease, a twin lake stood exposed – a mere memory of water, its bed cracked and barren, the other struggling against the inevitable march of evaporation. In the heart of Pakistan’s agricultural landscape, this paradox unfolds daily. As the sun rises over vast fields that place Pakistan among the world’s top producers of wheat, rice, sugar, and maize, it illuminates not prosperity but struggle. The fields have exhausted farmers whose lives remain trapped in subsistence cycles, despite their critical role in feeding a nation. Pakistan’s agricultural narrative is one of stark contrasts. While the country ranks among the top ten global producers of essential crops, its........