Gentle Reminder for Monday's ABM Townhall on "State of Pakistan Agritech"

Dear Friends,

Many moons ago, based on the early signs I am seeing, I made a dire prediction in January 2024 for the future of Pakistan as a part of my regular agritech crystall-balling exercise. (Jan 2025 update to come soon):

When flooding in Pakistan becomes a more common occurrence amidst escalating global geopolitical and trade conflicts teetering towards the catabolic collapse of the state, climate refugees are likely to migrate to India and India could face a massive humanitarian challenge.

As my friends from Pakistan tell me, since the creation of the army-led Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) within the last year, rapid changes have been taking place on a larger governmental level within agriculture in Pakistan. Corporate farming will scale far more rapidly than in India with no history of land reforms.

After I wrote this, I had long chats with many of my agritech friends from Pakistan. We spoke about Pakistan’s increasing vulnerability to funding and how climate change is forcing agripreneurs in Pakistan to rethink food and agriculture systems. I am excited to resume some of these conversations with the ABM community.

At the time of India’s Partittion and Independence, many agrarian scholars were concerned that the well-irrigated parts of the country have gone to Pakistan. Today, seventy seven years later, it is fascinating to observe the predicament of both the countries.

On one end, India is reeling with the unintended consequences of land reforms done successfully, and on the other end, Pakistan is reeling with the unintended consequences of not pursuing land reforms, further buttressed by a deepstate whose characteristic was succinctly captured by the late scholar Stephen Cohen: “while nations had armies, Pakistan was an exception. This was a country in which the army had a nation.”

I have invited a lot of friends from Pakistan agritech ecosystem to join this conversation to explore possibilities for the future of Pakistan agritech ecosystem.

State of Agritech in Pakistan with Sanakhwan Hussain Co-Founder Indus Acres, Ghasharib Shoukat, Product Manager - PAR and Saad Rahman, Project Manager, Inovatec Systems

Date: 9th December 2024

Time: 830 PM - 1030 PM IST

This is an ABM members-only event. ABM Members can RSVP here.

Despite antagonistic political forces at play, India and Pakistan can benefit a lot from mutual cooperation. From many of my exporter friends, I hear a lot of informal trade already happening across the borders since a long period of time.

Can we formalize some of these parts, build sufficient digital public infrastructure between the two countries and create a conducive business climate to enable cooperation and partnership between the two sibling countries that share a common heritage?

Hope to see you in the conversation.

Cheers,

Venky