Can Small Farmers Survive?: Problems of Commercializing the Milk Value Chain in Pakistan

Milk in Pakistan is infused with the self-understanding of a nation. British colonial administrators laid the modern-day foundations of the country’s structure through land grants to small farmers. In an agricultural country where nearly forty percent of the population remains food insecure, rearing animals is a way of life in the rural areas where milk remains an important source of animal protein. Selling the daily surplus that families don’t consume is a significant source of earnings for cash poor families – and here an unprecedented change is taking place within dairy management and milk procurement systems. The scale of this change is significant as is its ability to connect even the smallest of dairy farmers to the milk buying habits, shaped by sophisticated marketing campaigns, of middle-class buyers in the country’s burgeoning cities. The significant changes underway are the result of the actions of large multinational and national companies - including the entry of the commercial arm of the military in the commercialization of the milk value chain - paying cash to small farmers. These operations, which may at first seem symbiotic, in connecting rural sellers to urban buyers, are in fact placing significant pressures on farmers to increase the size of their holdings as well as to improve their breeding stock by moving towards improved (meaning imported) higher yielding cattle varieties. While national and provincial governments with the support of international development partners promote the dairy sector as contributing to rural, economic and national development, I argue that a strategy driven by efficiency will ultimately lead to the demise of those very same small livestock and agricultural farmers it aims to uplift. This is because the logic of commercializing the milk value chain through the operations of large Milk Procurement and Marketing Companies (MPMC’s) and the pressures to increase milk yields and herd sizes requires consolidation and financing – options that are mostly available to richer and larger farmers. Is modernized milk collection already moving beyond its reliance on collecting milk from dispersed small farms? The unfolding pressures carry with them the effects of increasing demand for all inputs, including consolidated land, water and feed operations which in turn have significant implications for small farmers, animals and the environment. With small farmers reliant on the income from the sale of milk that ties them to a system that may come to no longer need them, can we foretell the demise of small farms? I suggest that these insights are particularly relevant for the study of rural, economic, social, national and international development

Dairy Tales: Global Portraits of Milk and Law

Cow’s milk has enjoyed a widespread cultural signification in many parts of the world as “nature’s perfect food.”1 A growing body of scholarship, however, has challenged the image of cow’s milk in human diets and polities as a product of “nature,” and has instead sought to illuminate the political, scientific, colonial and postcolonial, economic, and social forces that have in fact defined the production, consumption, and cultural signification of cow’s milk in human societies. This emerging attention to the social, legal, and political significance of milk sits at the intersection of several fields of academic inquiry: anthropology, history, animal studies, development studies, gender studies, food studies, postcolonial and decolonial studies, and more. In each of these contexts, milk is not only the product of an animal, but also a product of human social, cultural, and legal choice

Evolution of Water Institutions in the Indus River Basin: Reflections from the Law of the Colorado River

Transboundary water institutions in the Indus River Basin can be fairly characterized as broken in key respects. International relations between India and Pakistan over the Indus Waters Treaty, as well as interprovincial relations within Pakistan over the 1991 Water Accord, speak to this sentiment. Stemming from research undertaken by the authors for the Harvard Water Federalism Project and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), this Article seeks to spur the evolution of the Indus River Basin’s water institutions by offering a comparative perspective from North America’s most “institutionally encompassed” basin, the Colorado River Basin. Mindful of the importance of context for comparative water law and policy scholarship, the Article begins with overviews of the Colorado and Indus basins. In turn, the Article considers in greater detail major water-related challenges facing the latter basin, including climate change and overallocation. Against this backdrop, the Article ultimately turns to analysis and prescription. Examining a host of topics involving transboundary water allocation, conservation, and governance, the Article considers key institutions associated with these topics in the Colorado River Basin and reflects on how, if at all, they may serve as reference points for institutional evolution in the Indus Basin. Many of the proposals in the Article are expensive. But compared to military operations, they are quite modest in terms of expense and minimize the risk of loss of life and destruction of property. Still, the Article prioritizes solutions that maximize individual and local freedom to the greatest extent possible. This means relying upon voluntary market-based transfers that protect the vulnerable, favoring incentives rather than regulations, and creating a reward structure that includes benefits other than water

Evolution of Water Institutions in the Indus River Basin: Reflections from the Law of the Colorado River

Transboundary water institutions in the Indus River Basin can be fairly characterized as broken in key respects. International relations between India and Pakistan over the Indus Waters Treaty, as well as interprovincial relations within Pakistan over the 1991 Water Accord, speak to this sentiment. Stemming from research undertaken by the authors for the Harvard Water Federalism Project and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), this Article seeks to spur the evolution of the Indus River Basin’s water institutions by offering a comparative perspective from North America’s most “institutionally encompassed” basin, the Colorado River Basin. Mindful of the importance of context for comparative water law and policy scholarship, the Article begins with overviews of the Colorado and Indus basins. In turn, the Article considers in greater detail major water-related challenges facing the latter basin, including climate change and overallocation. Against this backdrop, the Article ultimately turns to analysis and prescription. Examining a host of topics involving transboundary water allocation, conservation, and governance, the Article considers key institutions associated with these topics in the Colorado River Basin and reflects on how, if at all, they may serve as reference points for institutional evolution in the Indus Basin. Many of the proposals in the Article are expensive. But compared to military operations, they are quite modest in terms of expense and minimize the risk of loss of life and destruction of property. Still, the Article prioritizes solutions that maximize individual and local freedom to the greatest extent possible. This means relying upon voluntary market-based transfers that protect the vulnerable, favoring incentives rather than regulations, and creating a reward structure that includes benefits other than water

Evolution of Water Institutions in the Indus River Basin: Reflections from the Law of the Colorado River

Transboundary water institutions in the Indus River Basin can be fairlycharacterized as broken in key respects International relations between India andPakistan over the Indus Waters Treaty as well as interprovincial relations withinPakistan over the 1991 Water Accord speak to this sentiment Stemming fromresearch undertaken by the authors for the Harvard Water Federalism Project andthe United States Agency for International Development USAID this Articleseeks to spur the evolution of the Indus River Basin\u27s water institutions by offeringa comparative perspective from North America\u27s most ÔÇ£institutionallyencompassedÔÇØ basin the Colorado River Basin Mindful of the importance ofcontext for comparative water law and policy scholarship the Article begins withoverviews of the Colorado and Indus basins In turn the Article considers ingreater detail major waterrelated challenges facing the latter basin includingclimate change and overallocation Against this backdrop the Article ultimatelyturns to analysis and prescription Examining a host of topics involvingtransboundary water allocation conservation and governance the Articleconsiders key institutions associated with these topics in the Colorado River Basinand reflects on how if at all they may serve as reference points for institutionalevolution in the Indus Basin Many of the proposals in the Article are expensiveBut compared to military operations they are quite modest in terms of expense andminimize the risk of loss of life and destruction of property Still the Articleprioritizes solutions that maximize individual and local freedom to the greatest extent possible This means relying upon voluntary marketbased transfers thatprotect the vulnerable favoring incentives rather than regulations and creating areward structure that includes benefits other than wate

Challenge and Response in the Indus Basin

The authors examine the complex history of the development of the Indus Basin and the challenges faced by Pakistan during the evolution of the Indus Basin Irrigation System and the country\u27s responses to date. The Indus river system must meet the multiple needs of agriculture, energy and flood security. Pakistan\u27s constitutional structure, in which the federation shares overall responsibility for the operation of the Indus with the provinces, poses unique management and implementation challenges. What are the institutional arrangements Pakistan needs to address the challenges to the Indus Waters Treaty it signed with India in 1960? How is the country going to regulate the use of over-abstraction in the basin with the increased reliance on groundwater to maintain agricultural productivity? What are the institutional mechanisms in place to manage increased river flow variations from glacial melt as a result of climate change and for coping with devastating floods? At the same time, is the country maintaining adequate environmental flows to its delta? Provincial mistrust and a lack of institutional capacity underpins the history of the Indus in Pakistan with the Interprovincial Water Accord 1991 serving as a ray of hope on which to build a new institutional architecture of cooperation