PESHAWAR: In the last decade since the motorway surfaced along Hargoni village, where Noor Rehman grew old cultivating land, unplanned development has crept into the lives of farmers like him in ways they had not foreseen. Slowly but surely, it has robbed them of their livelihood.

Twenty years ago, Hargoni located in the eastern suburbs of Peshawar was all green fields and orchards. Acres of crops, vegetables and fruits were peppered with sparse settlements, where six to 10 families, original inhabitants of Hargoni, lived.

Now, the village is all concrete structures, mostly residential quarters with mere patches of land, where only clover is grown and sold as fodder. Once around 30 farmers like Noor Rehman worked in the land but now, there are only two.

“As more and more settlements have been built on agricultural land, farmers have left the village,” said Rehman, 70, who has been a farmer almost all his life. Rehman who is tenant said that Khans (landlords) are selling their lands to outsiders migrated from tribal area and other areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Official claims govt has no ‘legal tool’ to stop use of farmlands for housing, commercial activities

Research conducted by a teacher of University of Peshawar shows that total agriculture land in Hargoni Village was 115 hectares in 1991 and its built up area was six hectares. In 2009 the built up area in the village increased to 39 hectares.

A large-size plot opposite Hargoni measuring 100 acre is being turned into housing colony. Concrete structures are being raised on farm lands on both sides of the Grand Trunk Road and beyond.

Peshawar is losing fertile lands on its southeastern suburbs that experts call the ‘food basket’. The construction boom is swallowing agriculture lands in the adjacent districts of Charsadda, Nowshera and Mardan, too.

KP is already deficit in food production especially wheat. The Development Statistics of KP-2016, a document of the Bureau of Statistics Planning and Development, said the province’s total wheat production in 2014-15 was 1,155 tonnes against its total requirement of 3,056 tonnes, showing 1,901 tonnes of shortfall.

Director (agriculture) Dr Naveed Mukhtar said the government had no legal tool to stop conversion of farm lands for housing and commercial activities.

He said the director and its parent department were helpless to protect diminishing agriculture lands.

“The directorate could not protect its own assets,” said Dr Mukhtar while referring to the recent allotment of 25 acres of land at the Agriculture Research Institute Tarnab Farm for the establishment of the Peshawar Expo Centre.

The official records show that the total agriculture land in Peshawar district was 109,883 acres in 2001-02, which shrank to 106,576 acres in 2013-14. The successive government could not frame law to restrict use of agriculture land for other purposes.

Dr Attaur Rehman, who teaches geography at the University of Peshawar and urban and regional planning in the University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, said farmlands in Peshawar and its adjacent districts were under pressure due to the rapid and unplanned urbanisation.

He said farmlands further diminished due to the massive migration from tribal areas and other districts of the province and the stay of Afghan refugees.

“Twenty years ago, 80 percent of the total territory of Peshawar district was used for agriculture purpose. Currently, 700 hectares are required for construction of houses in Peshawar every year,” he said.

Dr Rehman said with the arrival of Afghan refugees in early 1980s Peshawar started expanding horizontally and now the trend shifted to vertical structure because of increasing land cost.

“Now the city is expanding both vertically and horizontally, which is dangerous,” said Dr Rehman, adding that non-implementation of first master plan designed in 1965 had resulted in unplanned urbanisation.

To cope with the issue of housing problem in Peshawar, the government launched Hayatabad Township, low-cost housing scheme, on a barren strip adjacent to Khyber Agency in early 1980s. Then Regi Model Town was launched in the same area in 1990s and 4,616 hectors land was acquired.

“These two planned housing schemes were set up to protect cultivable lands on the southeast of the city, serving as food basket,” said Dr Rehman. Peshawar Development Authority was set up in 1987 to regulate urban development.

Presently, the building control authorities have been set up in four municipal towns of the city, but miserably failed to check mushroom growth of housing schemes in public and private sectors.

Entities of the provincial and federal governments are launching new housing schemes that required thousands of hectares of lands. Provincial Housing Department is acquiring around 206,095 kanals of land for housing schemes in Peshawar and adjacent Nowshera districts. The army-owned Defence Housing Authority has begun the development of Phase-1 over 10,000 kanals of land on the Nasir Bagh Road.

Officials in the revenue department say the DHA is acquiring additional 5,000 acre land in Budhni, Wodpaga and Yaseen Abad area for Phase-2.

An official in the DHA confirmed that Phase-2 was under consideration but land had yet to be acquired.

The growing demand of housing has also attracted the country’s biggest property tycoon.

One official said the tycoon was looking for land in Nowshera and Charsadda districts due to unavailability of feasible site in Peshawar.

In addition, the Civil Aviation Authority is planning to acquire 2,000 acres lands in Mattani area for proposed new city’s airport.

The problem is not restricted to Peshawar only.

Fazal Wahab, a senior researcher in the directorate of agriculture, said the province was losing best cultivated areas due to conversion of farmlands for other purposes and fragmentation of lands.

“Farmers are adopting intensified farming because the cultivable land is diminishing,” he said. Intensive farming needs less area of land but requires a large amount of fertilisers, machinery and manpower.

Fazal Wahab said the government had categorised lands for agriculture, forests, housing under the land revenue act, but there existed no law to stop the construction of houses and commercial activities on farmlands.

Dr Rehman while suggesting remedy said that effective land use planning and regulation with full enforcement was the only solution to protect agricultural lands in Peshawar and other districts of the province.

Reduction in cultivable land has forced Noor Rehman, the farmer in Hargoni village, to give up farming. So is the case with his two sons.

“Hardly around 50 acre agriculture lands have left out of 250 acre in Hargoni. And the remaining will finish soon,” said Rehman.

He said the land he cultivated had shrunk from 5 acres to 2 during the last five years because his landlords sold it out. Where once they lived off the land, he and his family - growers of crops and vegetables that fed people and cattle - now have to buy their vegetables and stipple food like wheat from the market like everyone else.

“The values and outlook of the landlords have changed. Now, they value property more than land. Once there were green fields, where we would sleep under a tree but with buildings claiming the cultivable land, we have been robbed of that, too,” said Rehman.

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2017