Deep inside the Karachi suburb of Malir, far away from the smog and suffocation of the city, is Tofiq Pasha Mooraj’s little sanctuary of serenity, Pasha Farm. Spread over 6.5 acres of land, the farm is a self-sustaining unit, recycling much that it receives from the soil and getting enriched by all that the land has to give back.

“Tending to the farm is meditation for me,” says Mooraj. “I love my relationship with the soil. The soil always gives back, it never demands anything.”

The Pasha Farm is a 200-year-old farm that has produced almost all kinds of fruits and vegetables during different times. As Mooraj shows, the farm has a well too — but the well dries up with fluctuations in Malir’s water table. Then there are various patches of vegetables and fruits — little and large — some near the main entrance of the farm, others close to the house proper. In the gardens too, something or the other is either growing or being prepared to be sown.

In all its painstaking detail, the farm depicts Mooraj’s labour of love and his love for growing.

Urban food production can be organic and sustainable. One man has used it to transform lives

The Pasha Farm is a break from the traditional wisdom that agriculture can only be carried out in rural settings. Its urban agricultural practices are built to maintain a close relationship with nature, to understand how little organic things can make large differences. With agriculture undergoing a tremendous transition in Pakistan, the farm is an advertisement for sustainable and eco-friendly farming practices.

Urban agriculture’s greatest advantage is that it teaches us the value of food, often so easily available to us inside air conditioned supermarkets. Urban dwellers routinely get hit by inflation but never stop to do something about it. In such phases, even common vegetables get pricy and are in short supply in the market. These “uncalled-for” gaps in the supply and demand chain stoke the realisation that alternative farming methods should be looked up. The best alternative, as Pasha Farms show, is to utilise resources that are available and lying idle.

Mooraj’s farm, of course, also serves as the venue of his attempts at spreading the love of growing and local agriculture. Many might even remember Mooraj from Baghbani (PTV) and Kitchen Garden (Masala TV), where he advocated nurturing a kitchen garden, and introduced the tradition of fetching veggies and spices from the home garden and used in his recipes on the show.

“I know a lot of people who take pride in growing vegetables and everyday use common spices in their homes but the trend somehow could not gain the momentum it deserved. Farming enthusiasts only shared this hobby and information with their fellow professionals,” he says.

But then the earthquakes hit Pakistan in 2005, and Mooraj went to Balakot. This trip was transformative: “I realised the significance of engaging the masses into local agriculture after the earthquake. We ignore the art of growing food. It only occurs to us how important it is when scarcity strikes us.”

As he filmed a few episodes of his PTV show, Baghbani, in the town of Balakot, he was witness to the absolute destruction and misery wrought by the earthquake. Many who used to earn a good livelihood through agriculture were suddenly without a home. They had lost their entire crop and the seed for next year’s sowing; most of them had to move out of their area as displaced persons, to live in some temporary camp settlement.

But in equal measure was the potential and will of the people to reconstruct their economy. Some refused to leave their area, insisting on rebuilding it themselves.

Having come so close to the reality that the earthquake left behind, Mooraj mobilised his network to help Balakot’s local community rebuild their lives. He involved the Hisaar Foundation, a non-profit organisation whose prime focus is on food and water sustainability, and for whom he currently serves as Governor.

Hisaar first provided the Balakotis with seeds for fruit and vegetables, and then facilitated them in possible ways to support this farming. The seeds handed out were of fruits and vegetables that they were already sowing before the calamity, so that the locals did not need any new expertise to look after the crop.

“Their men would reconstruct the houses while the women happily engaged themselves in the farming of some local crop and fruits,” recalls Mooraj. “But since corn needs time to be ready, with the help of Hisaar, I undertook training a group of 100 women in sowing vegetables. This rapid reforestation helped in multiple ways. They had produce to sell; they could use the wood for fire, and plant waste for their animals fodder,” says Tofiq.

With the rural settlement of Balakot back on its feet, Hisaar undertook an urban agriculture project named Project Dana. Some 400 women, selected from across 18 administrative towns of Karachi, were directly trained by Mooraj and his team in growing common vegetables at minimum cost.

“Hisaar provided each woman a comprehensive gardening kit. We gave a garden shovel, a bag of compost, a watering can, pest repellents, and seeds. They were guided to use recycled material as pots that would decompose once the produce was ready. We taught them to turn empty shoe boxes into planting troughs. Old tyres were also used as pots and they are reusable several times. So the infrastructure did not incur a high cost,” Mooraj explains.

As Hisaar Foundation and Mooraj discovered later, the training provided to just 400 women supported the indirect training of 4,400 women in the later phases, and the number of eventual beneficiaries is far larger than that. Hundreds of households in the rural parts of Karachi are contributing towards the food and water conservation movement of Hisaar through this effort alone.

“If a woman is taught a method to earn a livelihood for her household, she holds more promise than her partner,” argues Mooraj, based on his years of experience as an agriculturist, horticulturist, social scientist and motivational speaker.

He explains that the urban poor are the poorest, because unlike the rural sector, they mostly don’t own their house and they have to buy their food. Mooraj says that urban families have to pay more and get much less in return, while rural families may not appear prosperous but actually are, mainly due to the food security they have.

As Project Dana proved, though, there are simple and inexpensive ways to ensure that the poor can have food security. What is needed is identifying the right people and creating the right conditions for them to thrive.

“Gardening as a hobby or for a purpose, both serve humanity. It is great to know your soil well, and to learn to be kind to it as it is to you,” says Mooraj.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 3rd, 2014