Pakistan doesn't have a water problem. It has a soil problem.

सालाने का कबीर नमस्कार welcome back to another episode of Thought Behind Things. याचा भाई साहब मौजूद है एक बहुत ही ख़ास मेहमान in an area of my interest. मैं बड़े ऐसे से agri के अंदर बहुत interested हूं. I've been trying to explore कि Pakistan में agriculture पर क्या हो रहा है. I think कि अगले पांच से दस साल के अंदर जो सबसे exciting सबसे exciting दुख्यार बहुत सारे areas में हो रहा but one of the most exciting work that will be happening will be in agriculture and it seems like कि यह जो यह जो narrative है यह इसके growing takers हैं. And so finally we found someone जिन्होंने जिन्होंने so he found us and I think God made it happen. But we have with us today तेमूर मलिक who is the co founder and ideator of a drawdown farm जो कि आजकल Pakistan I mean he is based out of The US तो एक तो उस तरह से we were able to tie out together but उसी के साथ साथ actually आज की तारीख में you know he he took part in a very interesting seminar on corporate farming He got a lot of insight on on what's really going to be happening potentially. What's the thought process top down? In terms of farming, आने वाले वक़्त के अंदर उनकी बहुत in depth research है climate change के ऊपर, farming के ऊपर, organic farming के ऊपर. Again, हम historically इस पूरी industry को और इस area को ignore करते आए हैं. मेरे हिसाब से वह कहते हैं ना Pakistan की शैराग. तो farming Pakistan की शैराग है. जितना भी हमें वह बुरी लगेगी PT वाले इस तरह की बातें करते हैं but really I mean food is all we do in Pakistan. हमारा literally हमारा social event सारा food है. हमारा you know literally we live to eat but it's also fairly unfortunate कि जो हम खा रहे हैं उसके बारे में हमें डेढ़ रुपए का कुछ नहीं पता and in a lot of ways recently you know we did the cheese episode as well which was absolutely mind numbing कि 75% of the cheese that you consume is actually vegetable oil and so you know हम कहते कि देसी खाना देसी देसी देसी that a lot of the देसी stuff that we are actually now consuming modern day में it's not that good and large very big reason for that has been कि the economics of farming is broken the supply chain is broken हमने उस area को ignore किया है, हम जो खा रहे है हमारा lifestyle, हमारी diabetes all of that is driven by the fact that we haven't given enough attention to this most important industry you know in Pakistan. For that we have with us today तेमुल मालिक साहब sir. Thank you so much for being part of the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. तेमुल भाई मैं conversation start करूंगा. Just trying to understand a little bit about where were you born and early life आपने कहा मिल जा रही. Sure thing. I was born in the coastal city of Karachi as were my parents before me.

My, sort of it was a wonderful childhood in the early years we spent in Karachi. My father was a military man, as was his father before him, as was his father before him. My grandfather, I mean my Dada, was a navyman and was the first military officer in Pakistan to get a medal from the कायद after the founding of the new country. On my mother's side, my grandfather was a banker with the National Bank of Pakistan. Before that he was, before partition he was with the State Bank of India. He went to Aligarh, had a couple of masters there in law and economics. But then he moved to Pakistan. My mother's mother's side also emigrated, they left everything behind and they also interestingly enough didn't really claim any evacuee properties. So, we were brought up in this milieu of sacrifice, the common good, the greater good. These were sort of some of the virtues that were very deeply embedded in our household. But otherwise, childhood was great. The first few years, it just so happened that my father's postings were back to back in Karachi or Malayakant. So we got to spend a lot of time in Karachi. एक थोड़ी सी थोड़ा सा Karachi पन जो है वह हमारे अंदर inculcate हुआ. हमारे समाज में and my, was now my middle brother. उस वक़्त हम दो ही थे और उसके बाद फिर ऐसा हुआ कि हमारी बहुत सारी postings हुई और मेरे ख़याल मैंने total कोई बारह schools change किए होंगे अपनी ज़िंदगी में. बहुत सारे साल तो ऐसी था कि एक एक साल बाद हमारी postings होती जाती थी और एक शहर से दूसरे कभी कोएटा, कभी मुल्तान, कभी इस्लामाबाद. Makes sense. High school कहां से किया आपने? High school मैंने finish किया इस्लामाबाद में. I was at the city school in इस्लामाबाद. कहता हूं कि अगर एक पाक्ष्टानी शहर है जिससे मैं really associate करता हूं तो वह इस्लामाबाद है. Interesting. High

school and what year did you graduate from high school? So I was 2006. Right. And then what about university?

So then university, I got into Columbia University when I was in high school. Took a year of So the I did my undergrad there and I studied. My main passion was Middle Eastern studies, Islamic studies but I also studied economics क्योंकि after all नौकरी भी करनी थी.

How did that passion develop? पहले तो आप बता रहे थे कि आपने year off लिया. Why did you take the year off? I took year off because my father unfortunately

fell ill with cancer unfortunately and you know to spend time with him as he was undergoing treatment and you know all of that I took care off. Right और उसके बाद फिर आपने apply किया and you like उसी वक्त apply में ही आपने Middle Eastern and Islamic studies लेने थे? मैंने so the way The US college system works is that unlike the British system where you get into a program and that is what you have to study. In the American college system it's usually a liberal arts system जहां पर you can go and you have a choice. You do indicate in your application what you might study but you are at complete liberty to study whatever you want and major and whatever you want. You can change it 10 times if you want. लेकिन मेरा passion middle studies था और वह मैंने continue. And how did that come about?

That's very good question ना. यह Pakistan का एक बच्चा यह level से निकलता है उसको तो mechanical engineering और doctorई और उसके अलावा जाता है.

Horse blenders लगे होते हैं. बिल्कुल ऐसे ही है. I think एक passion था मेरे अंदर ही. घर में I guess किताबें पढ़ी हुई थी उससे perhaps शुरू हुआ. एक sort of spirituality की काविश बचपन से थी और शायद उसी ने इसको engender किया और कुछ core questions थे कि यह part of the world जो जिसको मैं Greater Middle East कहता हूं मैं NASA का भी हम कह सकते हैं. वह उसमें बड़ी tragedies हुई, colonial interventions हुई, उनकी core cause क्या थी और मैं very grateful हूं कि Columbia University was the right place to be to really understand those things because they have an exceptional department. तो we are all considered the children of Edward Said in that program और Edward Said जो हैं वह एक बड़े amazing Palestinian Christian professor थे, बहुत noted Columbia University के और उन्होंने orientalism किताब लिखी और उस पर उन्होंने showcase किया कि जो philosophical disposition है western imperial thinking की, वह किस तरह permeate करती है जब वह इस region के बारे में सोचता है और सोचता आया and this is not something जो चलिए exist करती थी in colonial times, it is something that is continued to this very day और उसकी बहुत सारी negative ramifications हैं. तो वह program बहुत amazing था. उसने सोच को बहुत बदला, बहुत सारी आंखें खोली, बहुत सारी चीज़ें realize की और वह बहुत एक interdisciplinary program था कि हम उस region को हर तरह के lens से study कर सकते हैं whether it's economics, philosophy, history, sociology, religious studies. तो हर तरह के angle से हमें encourage किया जाता था linguistics कि हम इस region को study करें और dot connect करें और I think उसने मेरे sort of एक brain में framework of dot connecting and interconnected, integrative thinking जिसको मैं कहता हूं उसको शायद उजागर किया और तराशा. So I think that I am very grateful for. Interesting and साथ obviously did economics in You

graduated in 2011?

Twenty eleven years. और what was the first job after that? So I worked at on Wall Street at Citibank in New York, in Downtown New York and I was there for a few years. I was in a rotational program and trade finance. That was a very good experience because I'd never been in a corporate milieu. I mean, I'd done some internships in undergrad but that was a very different beast. I think उसमें एक very different किस्म की polishing का मौका मिला. You know, being in this fabled global institution, उसके अपने बहुत सारे benefits होते हैं going through their trainings when we first joined. That was quite a treat. पहली देखिए you were being paid to actually learn something which was quite lovely. तो वह बहुत enjoy किया और you know, just being in New York को obviously enjoy किया because, you know, Canical Columbia University is also in New York City. But as a student, you don't really enjoy the city much or at least we didn't. But you know, when you're, when you're a professional, I think you get to explore the city a lot more, the museums and the cultural offerings and so on. So that was, you know, I'm very grateful for that experience. But sole factor, जो है ना, I thought missing था. So at some point as the years moved on, you know, I felt something was amiss and that was not being provided by being there. I think finance has transformed a lot now and we can talk about that later in this episode as well. ESG बगैर बात ही नहीं होती. Sustainability is the core function and finance is going to lead the way because the private sector is the only thing that can help finance the transitions that we need in energy systems, transportation systems, agriculture and so on so forth. But at the time you know that was not the conversation at all. तो उसके बाद you know left that, had some entrepreneurial ambitions. I actually wanted to start a men's shirting company, custom. तो उस पर कुछ ऐसा काम किया with a couple of brilliant co founders who I am still very good friends with. One of them is an American, a Scottish American actually. The other ones Pakistani who moved back. We were mates in New York and was doing that and at the same time got an opportunity to be the interim CEO of a textile spinning mill in Ryewind in Lahore.

तो परसों. How did that come about? I mean you are sitting in New York. I was actually in that different role altogether and suddenly क्योंकि यह एक बड़ा सेठिया business है. आप एक बड़े different type of environment, corporate environment से आ रहे हैं. So, how did that role come about? Right, so that actually was

fortuitous in the sense of that's role that my wife used to have and then we got married and very soon after we found out that she was expecting and you know, and that seat was weak and she was unable to give this sort of time and do justice to that role while we were in New York. And so, you know, there was this offer, why don't you come, you know, and in her stead, sort of take up the reins, which is what we decided to do. You know, our kid was born, we stayed till, you know, my son was born and then obviously we did not know what we were getting into. तो grandparents की आशीत ज़रूरत महसूस हुई. तो फिर तो हमने कहा कि this is done deal. Job or no job waiting in Pakistan. तो we decided to sort of make the move and while my wife was busy with motherhood which is probably the toughest job in the world. I moved to what I thought would be greener pastures at this textile mill and of course अज़लाक would have it. मैंने जैसे ही join किया वह mill चंद दिन पहले उससे बंद हो चुकी थी because पता ही चला कि उस साल Pakistan में cotton crop जो थी वह one third destroy हो चुकी थी जिसकी वजह से cotton prices बहुत ज़्यादा बढ़ गई थी और एक spinning mill basically एक low margin high volume business है. It's not rocket science really. उसमें energy को दो cost matter करती हैं. Energy की cost matter करती है और cotton की cost की cost matter करती है और in our case both of them are very high. तो कुछ काम किया है कि energy efficiency को improve किया जाए हमारे पुराने gas to electricity generators थे जन बाकर के. तो you know we did a lot of working कि हम ज़्यादा efficient generators को लेकर आए and we ultimately sort of got Rolls Royce engines on that front. Energy का front एक था. उस वक्त solar पर भी मैंने बड़ी sort of studies कराएं. LED bulbs की तरफ transition की movement शुरू की कि हम energy efficiency भी करें. लेकिन obviously cotton की side दूसरी थी और बहुत ज़रूरी थी. जब तक वह fix ना हो, cotton prices कम ना आए तो हमारा business model कामयाब नहीं हो सकता था. Because we were not a very huge spinner. तो आपकी sort of economic जो value proposition है वह completely transform हो जाती है with scale. तो because it was a smaller course count spinner उसके economic dynamics जो थे वह बहुत commoditized थे. तो बहुत price sensitive business था. तो cotton की तरफ पर तवज्जो शुरू की कभी यह मसला है क्या? क्यों one third cotton इतनी important crop Pakistan की और सिर्फ हमारी mill ने suffer नहीं किया था बहुत सारी ore mills ने भी suffer किया था and they were they shut down a lot of other spinning mills you know tens of thousands of people were let go so it was obviously very cataclysmic for a lot of families But also for the macro economy because Pakistan का बहुत बड़ा export, largest export segment obviously cotton से linked है, right? Textile value addition. तो तो एक sort of probing की आदत तो university से वन गई थी और मुझे सब बताया dot connecting की भी. तो I really wanted to figure out कि यह हुआ क्यों. पता ही चला कि Pakistan में BT cotton का इस्तेमाल किया जाता जो कि एक genetically modified cotton है और BT cotton basically bacillus thuringiensis एक bacteria है जिसको insert किया गया है in the seed, in the germplasm of that cotton seed, ठीक है? और वह microbe जो है toxic होता है pink ball worm pest के लिए ठीक है और कुछ और pest के लिए not just the pink ball worm but cotton में Pakistan का major pest जो है वो pink ball worm है और at least उस वक़्त था. तो होता ही है biology में कि हर चीज़ resistance पैदा कर लेती है. And this is, we are seeing this across all sort of very, sort of tunnel vision solutions to problems. Problems. We are seeing this with herbicides because we now have super weeds that are resistant to various very toxic herbicides. तो अब उनसे भी toxic herbicides वन रही हैं. जब कोई चीज़ glyphosate के resistant हो गई तो dicamba आ गया. तो इस तरह की चीज़ें basically पूरी दुनिया में हम देख रहे हैं with pesticide resistance and also with herbicide resistance. तो basically मैंने कहा कि यह model तो fundamentally broken है because biology हमेशा जीतेगी. Evolution will always win. और होता यह कि जो seed companies हैं एक iteration fail होती है तो एक और iteration लेकर आते हैं उसके लिए वह और भी charge करते हैं and the farmer is basically beholden to those seeds forever. तो फिर मैंने सोचा कि क्या हम इस doom cycle में हमेशा के लिए फ़ंस गए या कोई alternate solution या model है. तो उसमें you know I just started sort of just searching on the internet and that's the wonder of the internet that you can get lost for couple of hours or in my case probably tens of thousands of hours. तो हुआ यह कि I found some studies in India, in an Indian state called Madhya Pradesh और वहां पर side by side trials एक Ag University ने study की कि एक farm farmland का piece है जो कि certified organic cotton उगा रहा है और उसका neighboring farmer BT cotton उगा रहा The same BT cotton, right? जिसका मैंने अभी ज़िक्र किया और वहां पर वह study ने यह दिखाया कि दस साल के बाद हुई थी after the transition of the farmer कि organic farmer की yields were higher than his neighbor जो beaty cotton उगा रहा था and very interestingly enough उसका pest pressure भी कम था यह बहुत बड़ा light bulb moment था because आमतौर पर यह समझा जाता कि भाई एक area में pest आ गए तो उन्होंने pests उन्होंने वह equal opportunity destroyers हैं और उन्होंने

जो crop उनको नज़र आएगी उन्होंने उसको तबाह कर देना अगर आपने passive income के बारे में परेशान है ख़ासकर आजकल की economy में जहां पर already cash continuously burn हो रहा है और inflation हमें मार रही है तो I'm proud to announce that this video is in partnership with समाया financials. They're offering two very very cool trainings. Capital market fundamentals जिसमें आप stocks और mutual funds में invest करना सीखेंगे और understand करेंगे कि आखिर एक company के अंदर क्या ऐसे fundamentals होते हैं जिनको आपने देखा होता है to figure out कि वह एक अच्छी company है to invest in और दूसरी training है technical analysis master class जिसमें आप सीखेंगे कि किस तरीके से हम different tradable assets like commodities, forex, stocks, crypto के अंदर थोड़े से पैसे लगाकर बहुत ज़्यादा पैसे बना सकते हैं. Personally यह training मैंने भी ली है and it's absolutely phenomenal. The link to the trainings are in the description below. Check them out and become financially healthy and now back to the podcast. And normally यह भी दिमाग़ में आता है कि जो organic है वह destroy होगा और जिसने वह particular sort of let's say monstrantओं का seed लगाया हुआ है जिसने अपने आप को बचाया हुआ है वह बचा रह जाएगा. So organic तो हमेशा दिमाग़ में यह आता है कि सबसे बेचारी मासूम वह है और बाकी जो genetically modified है या so on है वो actually ज़्यादा resistant होंगे ज़्यादा yield provide करेंगे तो ये entire premise was supposed to be कि जी seed हमसे लो कम से कम तुम्हारी yield 2X3X आएगी So this is interesting I didn't know about that. Exactly तो मेरे लिए भी बहुत बड़ा एक

बहुत बड़ा light bulb moment था और उसके बाद फिर मैं further probe करने लग गया कि यह क्यों है? What's the science of it? तो फिर उसके बाद obviously not in this sequence but बहुत सारी चीज़ें मैंने यह सीखी. यह सीखा कि soil health बहुत ज़रूरी है because वह nutrients को provide करती है in a bio available form जिससे plants की resistance बढ़ती है to diseases and pests और यह चीज़ लोगों के लिए समझना COVID से पहले खास तौर पर मुझे बड़ा मुश्किल होता था यह समझाना. But COVID made it much easier कि वही virus या वही उस virus का variant, right? कुछ लोगों को hospital में land कर रहा है, खुदाना खास्ता, some people are passing away और कुछ लोगों को कुछ भी नहीं हो रहा है. कुछ लोगों का एक mild flu symptom हो रहा है. तो क्या वजह है कि यह हो रहा है? And it all has to do with the internal immunity. Plants भी बिल्कुल इसी तरह है. They are biological creatures as well और immunity driving force है उसमें microbiology का generally बहुत बड़ा role है and human health हमारी gut का बहुत बड़ा role होता है immunity में और इसी तरह plants में उनकी भी gut जो कि soil का microbiome है. Actually दो microbiomes होते हैं plant के. एक soil में होता है और एक leaf surface पर होता है जिसको phylosphere भी कहते हैं. तो तो यह इन चीज़ों के बारे में पता चला. Discover किया है एक French scientist ने nineteen eighties में postulate किया था कि एक उसने term दिया था trophobiosis एक plant achieve कर सकता है which means complete immunity from pests because the plant is so strong that it is immune from pests. And there's a lot of cutting edge entomology research which is showing exactly the same thing. When a plant has exceptional health, pest is not going to touch it. It will go after plants nearby that sort of are weak, but it will never attack a plant that has strong immunity. In fact, one very ahead of his time agronomist in the I think it was in the 1960s, Dan Huber, he said that insects are nature's garbage collectors. They only go for plants which are unfit for consumption. There is a fundamental weakness in those plants. So, most radical organic या regenerative movement के आप कह रहे हैं practitioners हैं या advocates हैं तो वो तो कहते हैं कि यह खाना जिसको pest attack करे और उसको pest मसला होगी human को कुछ काना

नहीं चाहिए interesting. मैं इसे इसे इसे बड़ा इससे connect कर सकता because I got into this hobby आपके पीछे जो cabinet में आप लोगों को नज़र भी आ रही होगी. I have a fresh water fish tank and I have a salt water fish tank. बड़ी मज़ार बात यह है कि जब आप fish tank डालते हैं तो पहले तीन महीने हम इसे मछली नहीं डालते हम इसमें सिर्फ इसका bacteria grow करवाते हैं because if there is no bacteria the fish will die so microbes का जो role है मुझे उस time मुझे मछली से पता लगा आपको पौधों से पता लगा just how powerful they are to break down the nitrates to you know ammonia breaking के लिए वो सारा का सारा और जो हमने अब इसमें बनाया after a couple of years of research and वो कि हमारा पूरा cycle खुद से autonomously चलता है. But they will never attack a healthy fish interestingly मैंने यह भी देखा है अभी आपके पीछे एक मछली है जो कि एक white रंग के cage में है यह थोड़ी सी unhealthy हुई ना तो इसको बाकी मछलियों ने मारना शुरू कर दिया of the उस पर जाती है और उस पर जाकर वह microbes और insects खाकर उसको फ़ौरन से खत्म कर देते ताकि वह तो it's fascinating how evolution has a lot of these things built in that we never really thought about. They will never same species की चार machineयां डलीमी है. तीन एक दूसरे को कुछ भी नहीं करती लेकिन एक थोड़ी सी week हुई और वो तीनों के दिनों के पीछे जाती है so there is a lot of correlation very exciting लग रही है interesting so just

to complete so you were in the spinning mill for how long Not too long. I think maybe about ten months or so और वही है कि इस journey में जो मैंने अभी आपको बयान की मुझे basically एक और एक bug ने bite कर लिया जिसका नाम regenerative agriculture था. उन्हीं दिनों actually as I just mentioned you know my son had just been born and had been blessed with that. तो मैंने climate change को discover किया और मैंने जब यह चीज़ discover की तो मैं frankly speaking हिल गया. Because अब तो यह चीज़ बहुत mainstream है. Now everyone's living through it. The European cities are and the European sort of farmers are and so the American farmers and so on and so forth. So it's Uber mainstream at this point. At the time that wasn't the case. Or, लेकिन the science was extremely scary. Right? In 1987 or '88, the greatest climate scientist that the human species has ever produced, Jim Hansen, जो कि Columbia और NASA का joint center है called the Goddard Institute, उनको head करते हैं. उन्होंने congress में testimony दी थी और जो जो उन्होंने कहा था कि इस इस तरह से होगा because science यही showcase कर रही है, वह frightening accuracy के साथ हो रहा है और होता आए और जब मैंने यह चीज़ discover की और उसका एक scary fact मैं बहुत बताना ज़रूर चाहूंगा because Pakistan के लिए भी यह बहुत pertinent है. वह यह है कि Syrian civil war जिसने unfortunately उस country को completely decimate कर दिया. उसकी भी roots actually climate change में है. दो हज़ार छह से दो हज़ार दस तक Syria की तारीख का सबसे बड़ा drought आया और उस drought में तकरीबन 60% crops fail हो गई और 80% livestock मर गया. 60% crops, 80% livestock gone. तो 2,000,000 destitute farmers जो हैं वो शहरों में move करके and obviously there were no jobs waiting for them, no services for them. साथ ही Arab Spring movement शुरू हुई, so they started protesting themselves. Obviously, had an authoritarian government who tried to repress them, but they had nothing to lose. So, protested even more and the government became even more heavy handed. And then they protested even more and became very violent until the entire country cleaved asunder basically. And this is very, very dangerous because it's very dangerous for all countries, but in particular countries that are semi arid, which is unfortunately what we are as well. तो ये जब मुझे सारी चीज़ें पता चली और actually twenty ten में एक बहुत massive heat wave, heating event हुआ globally और यह NASA की study ने बाद में showcase भी किया and most people don't know about this. पूरी alp spring में भी actually climate change का बहुत बड़ा role है. Because उस twenty ten की heat wave में Pakistan में massive floods आए, right? Because you had glacial over melt and you had massive forest fires in Russia and Russia की wheat yield ने majorly suffer किया. तो अब हम जो इस Russia-Ukraine war की वजह से wheat के crisis के बारे में दुनिया suddenly has, you know, realized how big a deal that is. But this problem was also there in 2010, especially in countries that were major wheat importers and of course what's one of the biggest wheat importers in the world? Egypt. और हुआ यह कि price of wheat जो है पूरी दुनिया में it shot through the roof और government जो heavily subsidized है bread Egypt में यह एक sort of social compact का पाट था कि we have this hostel Mumbai dictatorship but one of the things the Egyptian people are getting at least they can afford is bread but जब वह उनकी double रोटी या नान आप कह लें unaffordable हो गया लोगों के लिए तो you know it it was like sort of the straw that broke the camel's back and then people just assembled and on बाहरीर Square and the rest as we know is history and you know you had the Arab spring which turned into the Arab winter. तो climate change का बहुत सारी चीज़ों में बहुत बड़ा role है और इन सब चीज़ों को जैसे जैसे मैं पढ़ रहा था तो you know I couldn't sleep at night. Was like this is absurd and to bring children, bringing life into this world doesn't make any sense. तो उसी दौरान मैंने एक study discover की जो मेरे लिए बड़ी game changing थी और वह study यह थी रोडेल institute दुनिया का बहुत आप समझते हैं कि organic agriculture का वह Harvard है. It's an institute located in Pennsylvania. It's a working farm over hundreds of acres. I've been there. I've had the privilege to be there as well. And they have been doing a series of studies, side by side trials that have been running for decades, conventional versus organic and so on. So they calculated that if 50% of global farmland goes to organic agriculture, we can sequester all the excess carbon that's in the atmosphere and put it in the soils. And now then they subsequently had a two point zero version of that report. Now it's called regenerative agriculture and we'll talk about that in some detail in this podcast, InshaAllah. But the core point was that, you know, voila, we have a solution. We can take that excess carbon, which today as things stand is about four twenty parts per million in the atmosphere, and we need to take it to a minimum of three fifty parts per million. So, till the industrial revolution, from the start of what's called the holocene जब ice age retreat होती है we had an era of remarkable an epoch of remarkable climatic stability. जिसमें जो carbon levels हैं वह about three fifty से three seventy parts per million के दिव्यान रहते हैं और उसी की वजह से agriculture on a mass scale possible होता है. उसी की वजह से civilization itself is possible because civilization is built on agriculture and that agriculture is in turn built on soil और interesting enough कि मैं यह quickly ज़रूर कहूंगा civilizations का कि हर great civilization की destruction में at least one of the reasons was the exhaustion of soil and there's a phenomenal book that I recommend everybody to read or at least peruse and that's why David Montgomery called Dirt and the Erosion of Civilization. The overworking of soils by plowing, the human beings developed something that turned out to be quite devastating, very useful in the beginning but devastating is the plow. पहले animal back plow था, अब हम tilling करते हैं these huge machines and tractor driven ways but back in the day it was obviously animal powered but plowing again and again and again year after year after year starts to destroy and erode soil. So you have these fertile riverbeds, the fertile crescent. You have the same in Greece and Rome. All of the great civilizations, as David Montgomery recounts, were destroyed when they destroyed their soil and their food production started to drop and at that point their populations had become so large that you really had a massive crisis and then ultimately those civilizations and states started to collapse. Interesting. जो आपका you mentioned कि आपका interest हुआ towards organic farming. Was that when you started drawdown farm as well? So, what happened was that once I was bitten by the bug, this is what I wanted my life's sort of mission to be at least at that point. मैंने कहा यह मैंने करना है. तो वह जुनून basically उस वक्त तक तारी हो चुका था and what I did was I made sort of these presentations, I learned all of these facts that I learned. I sort of wanted to convey them and the urgency of the situation. उसी दौरान कुछ और चीज़ों को भी सीखा. एक यह था कि दुनिया में सिर्फ climate change का ही गंभीर crisis नहीं है. एक और chattering crisis है जिसको sixth mass extinction भी कहा जाता है. Massive biodiversity crisis basically दुनिया की तरीक में it is thought five great extinction events हुए हैं. जिनमें से सबसे famous है जिसमें dinosaurs मर गए थे. हर mass extinction में vast majority of life gets eliminated from the planet and then things start anew. All of the other extinction events happened naturally. Usually some sort of external intervention like a meteor can hit and can cause climatic reverberations which change the climate and that's what causes things to die off and then life begins anew. जो last mass extinction थी वो dinosaurs सीखी थी और उससे पहले reptiles इस दुनिया पर राज करते थे उसके बाद mammals का rhizores में fungi का बहुत बड़ा role था because fungi suddenly could thrive a lot more and reptiles are particularly bad as core buddy creatures at fighting off fungal pathogens whereas mammals are much better at it और उससे mammals का basically रूच शुरू होता है you know humans आते हैं into the picture ultimately. तो तो वह सीखा कि basically दुनिया में mass scale destruction हो रही है. मैं उसकी एक statistic देता हूं. यह statistic यह show करता है कि in the and this came, this study came out in I think '20 maybe '18 that over the past twenty five years, till I think 2018, the insect population in Europe had declined by a whopping 75%. It's called insect armageddon. That's the you know, sort of pithy title that the media gave it. And this is extremely disturbing and shocking. And Europe is so verdant. There are so many biodiversity hotspots seemingly. Their pesticide regulations are some of the toughest in the world, like much superior to The United States for example. तो अगर Europe में ये हाल है तो आप developing countries का सोचें जहां पर regulations और especially अगर regulations हो भी on the books तो you know उनको follow up नहीं होता. But what was the thought behind it like what

hypothesis क्या था? So hypothesis

यह है scientist का कि pesticides are playing a massive role in this because pesticides are equal opportunity destroyers. It's sort of like broad range antibiotics जितना आप बोलिए. Exactly. It's sort of like मैं इसकी analogy देता हूं कि god forbid कोई दैशित गर्द एक cinema या एक mall पर take over कर लेते हैं और लोगों को यार कमाल बना लेते हैं, right? It's a hostage crisis और government decide करती है कि हम एक nuclear weapon उस पर गिरा देंगे. इसकी बिल्कुल भी sense नहीं बनती है but that is literally the paradigm of agriculture that we have been in since the green revolution. तो यह बड़ा एक dangerous paradigm है. तो एक massive cause यह है. Second cause यह है कि दुनिया में forests और digger जो biodiversity hotspots हैं उनको humans increasingly encroach भी कर रहे और destroy भी कर रहे हैं और actually pandemics की cause भी यही है because as humans encroach deeper into nature a lot of pathogens that are basically zoonotic diseases get transferred to humans. COVID-nineteen is thought that actual I've been increasing. Again, is report that the lab leak theory has been dismissed and really it is thought that this zoonotic disease has come in because of human interaction in wild zones. Usually bats are really effective pathogen carriers और bats जो है वह deep into forests होते हैं, humans interaction नहीं होता. They are able to withstand pathogens that can be very harmful to humans. तो they tend to be a major cause. Right. Usually कोई चीज़ उनको खा लेती है जिसको humans या तो touch करते हैं या खाते हैं. कोई interaction जाता right? तो sixth mass extinction का सीखा. उसके अलावा सीखा कि दुनिया में एक massive nutritional crisis भी है. Stunting malnutrition का crisis Pakistan में भी है but यह पूरी दुनिया में भी है और एक term use की जाती है the great nutrient collapse. So we are living through the great nutrient collapse. We have created somewhat of an abundance of food but that food is nutritionally deficient. Obviously, एक तो एक एक जंग food बहुत बढ़ गया है. So people are getting calories but those calories are not nutrient dense. But even in foods that we should be eating, the level of nutrition has gone down very significantly. And it has a few different reasons. So there are studies, for example, out of UC Davis, which showcase that you can get an orange in grocery stores that has zero vitamin C or an apple in grocery stores that has 95% less iron than just like five or six decades ago. So this has been a massive transformation and उसकी एक और reason यह है कि soils increasingly dead होती जा रही हैं. Our over reliance on synthetic fertilizers to the detriment of the ecology, the agroecological system and biodiversity is causing a nutrient collapse. और एक और reason जो great nutrient collapse की है कि जब carbon levels atmosphere में बढ़ते हैं तो plants की बढ़ोतरी actually बढ़ जाती है. What does that mean? Plants are growing faster when you have more carbon in the atmosphere But they are less nutrient dense. So, you know, it's a smorgasbord of reasons, it's multifactorial. But, you know, the principal sort of architects of this are the destruction of soils and then add to that the increasingly higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Right, so if we let's let's dive into it then. आपने multiple चीज़ों का वह किया. मैं इस conversation को थोड़ा सा लेकर आऊंगा Pakistan की तरफ. Sure. Let's talk about three things. First of all, you know, World Bank बार बार कह रहा है कि Pakistan is going to be a water scarce nation by 2025. बहुत क़रीब लगता है अब तो twenty thirteen भी आधा गुज़र चुका हुआ है और उसके पीछे वह पूरा का पूरा उनका एक पूरा data backed hypothesis है कि जी यह यह climate change यह करेगा. क्योंकि लोग कहते कि यार यह तो floods बढ़ रहे हैं, पानी आ रहा है तो यह तो नहीं ऐसा होगा but एक तो यह है कि well, नीनों और वह दूसरा वाला भी होता है कि पांच साल आपको floods आ रहे तो पांच साल doubt भी आएगा. Exactly. But more importantly हमारी population बहुत ज़्यादा grow कर रही है and the amount of water available like we take water as a free resource. We consider water as a free resource. We never really understand. We never really commodified और हम बड़े तपते भी हैं इसके ऊपर के. Nestle वाले आकर क्यों charge कर रहे हैं? कैसी चीज़ को जो कि हर लगाराने free में दिए. But वह in a in a a way it's finite and I the way that I truly began to understand the cost of water was when I studied the Middle East and I realized कि वहां पर पानी बनता है, वहां पर पानी आता नहीं है. और मैं जब यह World Bank की वह देख रहा था study तो उसके बाद मैंने I tried to figure out कि यार ऐसे तो क्या are we again like you said are we condemned to this वह कि यार पानी तो ख़त्म हो जाएगा तो हम सारे के सारे प्यासे मर जाएंगे. In its eventuality bring the cost of energy down to a level where energy input of water creation इतनी cost करे जितना मुझे normal पड़ता है. Right? So वह Pakistan के लिए equate हो रही है तो then we will have effectively solved that problem. But उसमें it seems like at least fifteen to twenty years का एक वह है. So we are not forever condemned. But for fifteen, twenty years unless we radically improve the efficiency अच्छा एक और बड़ी मज़दार बात यह है कि Pakistan में फिर जब मैंने यह देखा मैंने कहा यार अच्छा पानी तो वन नहीं सकता. हम तो afford ही नहीं करते हम गरीब लोग हैं. तो पानी इस्तेमाल किधर हो रहा है? और ग्यारह percent जो है वह actually जा रहा है agriculture में. Agriculture का मैंने पाकिस्तानी पानी देखा कि Pakistan में कितना है तो पता लगा कि जो दुनिया के जो developed economies हैं वह Pakistan से comparably five to 10% पानी के अंदर same yield produce कर रही है. That means कि if I am for example whatever I am producing right now that I can produce at let's say inefficient immune at 30%. So जो जो 50 मेरा change आया है that means every पाकिस्तानी today can have five times more water. Yes. Right? Five times से भी ज़्यादा बनता है actually. So it's really about looking at the problem and I understood कि अच्छा यार problem पानी का नहीं है. पानी की storage का नहीं है. पानी की और किसी सबसे पहला problem यह है कि भाई यह agriculture वाले पानी के साथ कर क्या रहे हैं? बिल्कुल सही है. बिल्कुल सही है. So सोचो पानी का वहां पर वह था. दूसरा fertilizer this I dawned upon me when I spoke to farm dad they came to the podcast. Follow up इनका हुआ अदरदाक दाऊत साहब the family that built that that bought out anger but actually built फात्मा fertilizer if I am not wrong. And you know he spoke about how his son is now getting into I am not sure the exact word for it but it's micro fertilizer या वो वो उनका concept basically यह है कि बजाय इसके क्या आप generic fertilizer फेंकते जाएं आप soil testing करके individual specific fertilizers add करें. जो कि again जो मेरा बाहर वाला fish tank है उसमें जो हम fertilizer डालते हैं क्योंकि उन पौधों को उसमें सारी live plants लगे हुए तो उसमें phosphates अलग आते हैं. Magnesium अलग आता है उसमें वो Pakistan में हम urea में urea फेंकते हैं और हम कहते हैं बस जी लाता बक्कल कुछ हो जाएगा इसका system बिल्कुल तो optimization वहां से तो मुझे समझ आएगा अच्छा fertilizer का वो और मुझे फिर उसमें ये भी पता लगा through a lot of and I want you your insight on this कि जी A we are over fertilizing B the fertilizer is killing our land to the extent कि एक time आएगा जिसमें कुछ सारों के लिए वो like uncultivatable हो जाएगा वो land like we are killing that land बहुत थोड़ा spread है. जो real impact आ रहा है वह आपका यह fertilize जो यह fertilizer land तबाह कर रहा है. अच्छा तीसरा इसमें जो major मुझे मसला नज़र आया वह मुझे pesticides में नज़र आया hair spray उठाऊं या मैं इतना की चीज़ें करूं और मैं एक सेब के ऊपर पांच छह minute के लिए करता रहूं. तो शायद जो सात दोस्त देख रहा है वह उसको धोकर भी रखा है. Right? But हम spray after spray after spray करी जा रहे हैं, प्रैंकी जा रहे हैं और वह फिर माल आता है आपके पास और उसके साथ god alone knows क्या हुआ होता है and that we're eating that and in a lot of ways I feel like कि the reason why हमारे लोगों लोग बेचारे जो है ना वह अजीबों गरीब के संग के हो रहे हैं कि you know again diabetes the largest population with diabetes in the world पाकिस्तानी पर है. अजीब और गरीब के सामने की problems हो रही हैं. मतलब मैं अपने दोस्तों को देखता हूं. I got a tumor in my mouth last year. I had a massive surgery for that. I was at a risk of losing my speech and my ability to eat because वह tongue could have gone it for the fifty fifty, right? My friend, like tumours, crazy tumours आ रहे हैं. Allergies, intolerances, all are रही हैं. Heart attacks आ रहे हैं. At the age of what? Late twenties, early thirties. And so it's it has most certainly something to do with what we're eating. And जो यह concept है कि यार हमारा देसी, हमारा देसी, वह हमारा देसी और a grass root level like आप again देख लें कि हमारे दूध के साथ क्या हो रहा है? And so let's start with these three major areas. Water, fertilizer and pesticide. What are the hard facts about Pakistan and what's really going on there? छोटा सवाल आपने पूछा है.

तो let's tackle each of these one by one. Because each of these is in itself

a sea. Yeah, and I want you to start off with pesticides and fertilizer. Want you to come to water at the end because there are a lot of counter questions there.

We'll get to water at the end then. Sure. So let's begin with fertilizers. Alright आपने जो mention किया था the scions of रुज़ाक साहब they've invested in a company called vital agri nutrients so what those people good folk do and we're doing a little bit of work with them as well. They've crafted some low pH fertilizers and they work with farmers also. कुछ custom blends भी वह बनाकर दे देते हैं. What they've done is they've also combined certain micronutrients with macronutrients which is a good very good thing. One of the things they've so let's talk about low pH fertilizers and what does that mean. So Pakzani soils are generally highly calcareous high pH soils. They have a lot of calcium and they're high pH and high pH is not good and pH is a logarithmic scale So a 7.1 pH and a 7.2 pH लगता है साथ साथ ही है इसमें बहुत ज़मीन आसमान का फ़र्क होता है और 8.1 और 8.2 में ज़मीन आसमान का फ़र्क है. ठीक है? Pakistan में average pH आजकल चल रही हैं जो मैंने different farmers से भी connect किया है और हमारे farms PC था नाता 8.2, 8.3, 8.4. This is extremely high. What this does is that what it effectively means is that the fertilizers that we apply are not being absorbed by the plants well at all or very limited amounts of that is being absorbed. And that's really bad because it's extraordinarily wasteful and it's also very ecologically destructive. So it's good that Van has come up with some of these fertilizers. But that's not the end all and the be all. So let's look at each of the main fertilizers that are used in Pakistan. बिल्कुल जैसा आपने कहा urea is the prime fertilizer that the पाक्सानी farmer uses. Urea की बुरी सबसे सस्ती है compared to potassium or DAP क्योंकि यह imported fertilizers in Pakistan में indigenous production इनकी नहीं है. Most of the let's talk about urea first, right? Let's take each of these macros one by one and we'll also get to micros. This is very important because आपने एक बहुत गहरा सवाल पुछा है और इसको हमें अगर truly unfurl करना है इसको तो हमें एक एक चीज़ को समझना होगा. तो urea एक nitrogen का fertilizer source है, right? Nitrogen is a primary macronutrient जिसको कहा जाता है अमूमन तौर पर समझा जाता है macronutrients NPK हैं लेकिन कुछ और macronutrients भी हैं calcium, sulfur यह भी बहुत ज़रूरी है इनके बारे में तो Pakistan में सोचता ही नहीं. Nitrogen पर ही farmers का focus है urea की बोरी सबसे सस्ती है. Subsidized उसकी gas है Pakistan में और Pakistan में urea वैसे भी internationally compare करें तो वह सस्ता है. There was a time a few couple of years ago Pakistani urea was three times cheaper than the international urea price. Today it's about 60% cheaper. तो पाकिस्तानी farmer जो बड़ा रोता है urea के price पर actually उसको बहुत सस्ती urea मिल रही है. लेकिन इस सस्ती urea के बहुत सारे missile और deleterious consequences भी हैं. Urea जब हम soil में डालते हैं यह high salt fertilizers हैं तो यह overtime ज़मीन की तबाही करते हैं because यह microbes को मारते हैं, ज़मीन को ज़्यादा salty बनाते हैं. यह climatically बहुत dangerous हैं because इनकी manufacturing में natural gas का इस्तेमाल बहुत energy intensive process है. इस process को Haber Bosch process कहा जाता है. यह दो German scientists ने actually एक entrepreneur industrialist और एक scientist ने invent किया था. One of them won the Nobel prize in chemistry for this And it actually transformed agriculture because it made agriculture into its current chemistry focused paradigm. और यह बहुत energy intensive process है, ठीक है? Gas Pakistan में बहुत कम है. Subsidised gas हम देते हैं urea manufacturers को और gas की extraction बहुत ज़्यादा methane produce करती है momentarily. और methane जो है वह about something like '91 times more potent है than carbon dioxide. तो methane एक बहुत dangerous greenhouse gas है. एक तो यह मसला है उसका. दूसरा मसला उसका यह है कि जब हम urea को apply करते हैं तो हमारी soils में anywhere from 50 to 70% वह urea जाया होती है, ठीक है? वो या तो volatilize हो जाती है as a very potent green gas called nitrous oxide which is maybe about two ninety eight times more potent than carbon dioxide और या वो leach down होकर हमारे underground aquifers को pollute कर रही है और हमारा पानी high nitrate हो रहा है which is not fit for human or animal consumption. तो यह भी एक बहुत बड़ा मसला है हमारे rural areas में कि हमारा underground water जो है वह unfit for human consumption है. तो यह एक urea का मसला है. उसके अलावा जो share economic waste है वह तो profound और massive है ही है. अब interesting बात यह है कि urea को reduce कैसे किया जा सकता है? इसमें हमारे पास incredible amounts of scientific data और information है. अगर हमारी soils में organic matter की तादाद अच्छी होगी और एक soil living soil food web exist करता है. अब soil food web क्या चीज़ है यह भी समझना बड़ा ज़रूरी है. एक living soil so there is a great sort of pithy statement without roots and biology It's just geology. Soil is made up of particles, of rock particles which can be very fine like sand, they can be in the form of clay but it's basically rock particles and all of this has come through you know thousands of years from mountains. हर रोज़ mountains जो है पूरी दुनिया में बहुत ही minuscule amount में degrade हो रहे हैं और sand के form पर हवा में वह जाई जा रहे हैं, right? तो that's basically where we get this geological base and इसमें कुछ भी नहीं है life unless there are roots in there because the roots are the food source and the home of that biology and that biology is bacteria, fungi, archaea, nematodes, and then microarthropods, macroarthropods like tiny spiders. Like nematodes are tiny microscopic worms. And then of course earthworms, which like, you know, which is a macro sort of soil food web creature. Everything feeds off of each other, everything that eats another thing poops. That entire system creates a living soil food web and cycles nutrients that plants need. Now Ireland's top agricultural university last year came up with an incredible study which shows that if you have a certain amount of earthworms per square foot, in your agricultural land, that means that you have enough nutrient cycling happening that you do not need to add any synthetic fertilizer at all, which is incredible. So, what a farming system should be is that it should be focusing on harnessing this incredible power of nature, basically enhancing the biology. You should be farming the microbiota in your soil because that's ultimately what's going to feed your plants. So, एक तो यह चीज़ हो गयी. Even within fertilizers - और यह कम एक दिन minute होते है, it takes time. We know that. So synthetic fertilizers will be needed in the, sort of as a transition piece also, but we can dramatically reduce them. There are farmers in the world that have reduced their urea very easily, even the first year by 50%. And that's by adding things like sulfur in a one to 10 ratio with nitrogen. That's like adding things like molybdenum, which is a very powerful and important micronutrient. So you just need trace amounts of it. There's an incredible study I was just reading. In Egypt, they did a trial where just adding six milligrams of molybdenum per citrus tree in a citrus orchard led to a 44% increase in yields, and you could do a dramatic reduction for nitrogen. Because molybdenum so all of these trace minerals, these metallic trace minerals like your zinc, or your iron, your copper, they're basically enzyme cofactors. Their presence or absence is what ensures that there will be certain enzymes that will be produced by a plant or those enzymes won't be produced right these are cofactors इनके बगैर वो चीज़ possible ही नहीं है right तो जब ये होती हैं तो certain enzymes बनते हैं molybdenum जो है वो nitrogenous reductors enzyme, enzyme का cofactor उसकी वजह से nitrogen use efficiency बहुत बढ़ जाती है. Now what is nitrogen? What does it do? Nitrogen we need as well in our bodies as well. Nitrogen is what a plant uses to make amino acids and those then those amino acids are used to make complete proteins. Complete protein वन नहीं सकती plant के अंदर properly unless enough मोली ना हो Pakistan की soils especially deficient हैं बहुत सारी चीज़ों में but molybdenum in particular and the very sad and deeply sardonic thing is in an agricultural country we don't have a single molybdenum fertilizer available in this country. ठीक है? तो हम एक तो यह बहुत amazing low hanging fruit है और मैं आपको इस पूरी podcast episode में hopefully बहुत सारे low hanging fruits का बताऊंगा जो कि एक massive transformation cause कर सकती है हमारे agriculture में. तो एक मैंने आपको बता दिया हमें lipidulin sulphur मिलता है लेकिन उसका इस्तेमाल बहुत कम farmers करते हैं और वह भी right तरीके से इस्तेमाल करना फिर certain microbiology should be added to soils so there's a class of microbes called nitrogen fixing bacteria so if you add the nitrogen fixing bacteria with the nitrogen that you're giving you can again reduce your nitrogen. Molybden भी डाल रहे हैं, sulfur भी डाल रहे हैं, nitrogen fixing bacteria डाल रहे हैं. आप एक food source डाल रहे हैं अपने microbes के लिए. It could be molasses, it could be humic acid which is a carbon source available in Pakistan thankfully. इन सब चीज़ों को जब आप डालेंगे as a cocktail तो आपकी और micro dosing करेंगे rather than a के शुरू में बोरी पादी urea की तो आप देखेंगे कि आपकी yields में भी बहुत इज़ाफा होगा और आपकी fertilizer

की usage reduce हो जाएगी treatment. Is there a way to identify कि क्या है क्या नहीं है? So you know I just feel like कि यह ना हो कि एक science and then super science and then over science right? So मैं एक चीज़ डालता था. मैंने पहले agriculture को बढ़ाने के लिए मैंने urea डालना शुरू किया. मुझे पता लगा यार use urea के मसाले हैं तो मैंने पचास और चीज़ें ले आए हों जो अटके में उसको solve करूं but then maybe that might cause more problems, right? Is there a way to identify every every single aspect of this of all of these things? So back in 02/1819 I went into a very bad spiral of hydroponics and I you know मैंने top to bottom, end to end सारा समझा कि यार किस तरह है और ख़ासकर मेरा उसमें core interest उस time पर यह था autonomous करने का उसको कि यार हर चीज़ के sensors लगे में हों और हर चीज़ की individual items available हों और जो requirement है उसके हिसाब से वह उसको dose कर कुर के वह हर चीज़ को optimize करें. चाहे वह FIT level पर हो, चाहे वह climate level के ऊपर हो. But then what I understood was कि सोचो उसमें मुझे यह समझ आई कि हां there are certain sensors. वह long story short समझ ही आएगी Pakistan तो is so far off from that because just the cost overrun and the product produced it it can't be reconciled in our GDP. But I understood कि अच्छा possibility exist करती है. There's a lot of work being done there. आपने जो चीज़ें बताई हैं इसमें soil testing तो चलो एक एक एक lab style soil testing मैं कर सकता हूं. But is there a more efficient, more real time process of of identifying कि यार individually मेरे soil के different patches में क्या क्या स्वीक्षुर्य तैयार चल रही है with like let's say in the best case scenario a real time monitor happening कि यार अच्छा मैंने हर पचास पचास foot पर sensor लगाया हुआ है वह मुझे चीज़ें बता रहा है कि यार अच्छा microbes की यह सूरतें हाल है, इसकी यह सूरतें हाल है, उसकी यह सूरतें हाल है. That's

a very interesting question. I think इतनी गहराइयों की शायद ज़रूरत ना पड़े but But there is definitely science out there or tools out there that are needed. One incredible tool is a and generally is much superior to a soil test. Is pretty cutting edge, a sap analysis of a plant. तो आप in season plant से जितना हम blood draws करते हैं and that tells us so much about our health. We can do the exact same thing for plants with a sap analysis and that really tells you कि क्या कौन से minerals absorb हो रहे हैं plant में कौन से नहीं हो रहे हैं because it could be that the soil test is saying you have plenty of iron but that iron can be highly oxidized and really not bio available at all right and this is the case for many nutrients that soil tests will show but the plant actually doesn't have. तो इस तरह के कुछ tools हैं जो definitely उनकी utility है लेकिन Pakistan में उनको use करना बड़ा मुश्किल है. तो I think हमें Pakistan में broad brush strokes के solutions बनाने हैं पर उनको एक safe तरीके से करना है और उनको biology से इंस्कॉर्स करना है ताकि biology जो है वो बढ़े और farmer की खुशहाली भी बढ़े because हम fertilizers को sort of overtime reduce कर सकते हैं and the same story मैंने urea की कहानी लंबी बताई but the same can be done for phosphorus fertilizers, potassium fertilizers. Potassium तो Pakistan में डाला ही बहुत कम जाता है. And this is very problematic because it's a very important macronutrient. And then you know again micronutrients maybe Pakistan में

बहुत अच्छी options नहीं है और जो options हैं भी वो बहुत सारे farmers मुझे vast majority डालती ही नहीं है. तो I think this is a big problem. So एक तो इसमें आपने मुझे बताया कि and I wanna sort of साथ साथ मैं solutions को करना चाह रहा हूं कि आप already उस पर. चले गए. एक तो आपने बताया कि बजाय इसके random एक एक एक broad fertilizer के बजाय you have to diversify the inputs that you're putting in and particularly increasing the the the microbiology, you know, of your land or soil. एक तो मुझे इसमें यह बताएं कि where does the organic part comes in this? Because a lot of the organic certification my understanding is they say कि भाई कुछ भी ना डलावो. Right? So so जब आप regenerate कर रहे उसके लिए भी आप चीज़ें तो डाल रहे हैं in one way or the other. Right? दूसरा for land that apparently has been destroyed, is there hope for regeneration of that said land with cost effective techniques? I am sure there are but वो अगर बहुत expensive है तो वो ज़ाहिर कि Pakistan जैसी economies को नहीं बर्ताश कर सके. So what do you think about those things? Those are great questions.

Let's talk about the certification first. The organic certification is generally a pretty rigid one. There are three principal certifications but two really big ones. One is the USDA certification and the other one is the EU one. Is a third Japanese one as well. There are some exports that happen to Japan out of Pakistan. But it's basically these big auditor companies that can do each of those and it's up to the farmer who can't get an answer. They exist in Pakistan such as Control Union which is a really big Dutch company and they have offices in Karachi as Organic certification is quite rigid. There is a big list of do's and don'ts, what you can put in, what you cannot put in. Everything that you put in has to be approved for organic agriculture. In The US, there are a lot of fertilizer products that are certified organic, can be used for agriculture. There's a body called OMRI, which is the Organic Materials Research Institute. Very high scientific excellence in that organization and they determine if a product is fit for, if it's naturally derived, if it's fit for organic agriculture. तो macro or micronutrients organically derived भी हो सकते हैं और उनका इस्तेमाल किया जा सकते हैं. So it's not necessarily true कि कुछ भी डालने से वह organic out होगी. Basically आपने bottom of the food chain से organic start करना है and हिस्सा हिस्सा you have to make it way to the top. Absolutely. If that's the strategy you are going for, right? If you if you're like I have to be certified. Certification की भी requirements है transition time की. Which can range from one year to three years depending आपने किस किस्म के harsh chemicals पहले use किए हुए The sort of more toxic, the pesticides or fungicides or herbicides you've used, वह soil test basically भेजते हैं. It goes to The Netherlands and they determine वह एक organic obsession से हुआ था कि हम certified organic करेंगे. लेकिन Pakistan में बहुत सारे वह tools exist ही नहीं करते. They are now certified organic pesticides, they are certified organic herbicides, fungicides. Herbicides less so. That's the holy grail of sort of organic agriculture to have safe, non toxic, naturally derived herbicides. Although we are part of, we are living through our biological revolution where there are certain companies that are just, that are tantalizingly close to cracking that nut and that would be a massive game changer. But we'll get to that later. तो आपका core question ये था की certification के लिए क्या हमें कुछ भी नहीं डालना. अच्छा दूसरी बात ये की farmers खुद बहुत सारे amendments बना सकते हैं जो various micros, macros डालते हैं plus biology को डाला जाता है. Organic में generally जो भी आप nutrient डालते वो biologically ensconced होता है form में होता है जिस तरह compost होगी या vermicompost to worm से बनाई जाती है. These are two examples but there are many many many others right. आपका दूसरा question था कि एक ज़मीन अगर बिल्कुल दबा हो जाए Right? It's in really bad order. Can it be regenerated? And the answer is a resounding yes. And yes, there are cost effective tools. And I will also say कि in a country like Pakistan or even most of the world, the way to do this is not cold turkey and the organic certified model, but rather to regenerate first. And then once your soil is regenerated and in that time you're using certain synthetic products, but you're using them very wisely and you are using them in a way. Data driven way basically. Data driven or science driven you know. I would say science driven more than data driven because data से imply होता है कि आप on the spot चीज़ों को देख रहे हैं. I would say science based because studies यह कह रहे हैं कि इस तरह से दोगे तो यह बेहतर है and in a way जो biology के साथ work करे so its like sort of chemistry in the service of biology as opposed to chemistry that destroys biology and that's that's possible जो मैंने आपको urea के delivery की तरीके बताए वो soil को actually enhance करेंगे as opposed to soil को destroy करना Because आप एक वक्त में पूरी बुरी नहीं डाल रहे आप micro dosing कर रहे हैं आप साथ उसको buffer कर रहे हैं you know with the sort of organic materials like carbon and biology and so on. तो इस तरह की चीज़ें करना soil के लिए बड़ा मुफीद होगा. और साथ साथ आप but you know thank god for technology we now have seed drills that can just directly drill seeds in right and they are drills that are for large scale agriculture but in Africa I found like these sort of hand pushed seed drills that really small holder farmers can also do so they can eliminate tilling as well which is amazing. अच्छा tilling का आपने पुछा नुकसान क्या होता है? आप इस तरह सोचें कि हम इस इस कमरे में है, इस घर में है और एक कोई खलाई मखलूक आती है and they have these very destructive sort of really sharp tools at the end of their flying saucers और वह इस पूरी street के या शहर के घरों के ऊपर से चलती है और उनको साथ साथ उनकी छतों को destroy करते हुए और उसमें sort of इंसान भी बहुत सारे मरते हुए जा रहे हैं और हमारे food sources let's say हम we live off the fruit that one type of fruit that grows in a tree outside our house. वह trees भी इकट्ठे जा रहे हैं और हमारी sort of छतें भी जाती जा रही हैं. हम भी मरते जा रहे हैं तो we basically are being destroyed. That's exactly what we do when we plow or till the soil because हमने microbes को destroy कर दिया. उनके घरों को destroy कर दिया, उनके food sources को destroy कर दिया and

you are basically. Biological destruction उससे primarily कि जी आपकी जो जो हम देख सकते हैं उसके लिए सबसे simple वह है कि चूटियों का अगर कोई ant hale बना हुआ है तो वह तब आ जाएगा, right? वही वाली बात है कि आपने पहले यह premise पूरा build किया कि उनकी एक direct requirement है आपकी food की supply chain के अंदर. And so if you keep on destroying them then you will keep on you will constantly have to add those sort of microbes and bacterias and this and that and I think insects को तो आप कर भी नहीं सकते जो कि I think potentially बड़ी useful हो सकता सकता है. है. Exactly और एक cropping cycle में you can only add so much, right?

Because it takes time for these things to accrue and build. तो अगर आप हर cropping cycle के बाद tilling कर रहे हैं, you are effectively back to square one in some way shape and form, right? And then the other thing is that, also related to sort of tilling, is that all of the carbon that you've sequestered, let's say, or put in soil, that also gets released into the atmosphere. So a very large chunk of the carbon that's in the atmosphere is through biological destruction, either of soils or of forests. So, lot of people think that it's only cars and energy production, but it's actually a very large chunk of it is also through soils and destruction forests. तो यह भी एक बहुत बड़ा role. तो अगर हमने वाकई में agriculture को एक climate change solution बनाना है which I advocate तो तो उसके लिए भी tilling को बहुत significantly minimize करना होगा या तो खत्म करना होगा. Interesting.

Tell me about pesticides. Yeah. What's happening there in Pakistan? We we do know that pests are a problem. हमारा Tiddy का problem हुआ था 2,020 में और बड़ा massive हुआ था lot of people know about that. So, शायद हम क्या कराता है American सुंडी और उनसे तो शायद इतना connect ना कर पाए apart from the fact कि हमने TV पर बहुत बचपन में देखा था. But you know टिड्डी को क्या कहते हैं? Locust. Locust, right? So if you've seen Interstellar there's a lot of conversation. If you've really sort of seen interstellar there's a lot of talk conversation about that as well there. Interstellar actually बड़ी मदद की है because लोगों ने उसमें space देखा. उसमें जो उन्होंने दुनिया के जो universe build की भी थी वह बड़ी मज़ेदार थी कि वह दिखा रहे थे आपको कि जी agri collapse किस तरफ़ लेकर जाता है? Exactly. And and and and for a lot of people it was just like oh अच्छा वह तो just a पीछे है but actually there's a lot of science जिसकी basis पर उन्होंने वह build किया हुआ था and we could potentially head there, right? So, what what's the thought there? कि कि जी मैं pesticides को completely eliminate भी नहीं कर सकता. But मैं indiscriminately pesticides डालता हूं जिससे again like you mentioned early on harmful chemicals more and more toxic are being put out there not just in the environment but directly on the vegetables and fruits that we're consuming. So give me an overview of what's going on there. Sure absolutely With pleasure. So pesticides are a pretty

sort of degenerative and nefarious thing, and they've sort of become necessary because of the farming systems that we've had over the past many decades since the Green Revolution. But they are, incidentally enough, not actually necessary if you have a different agricultural paradigm. I'll tell you why. Basically, pest is attracted to a plant that is not healthy. I think I might have mentioned that earlier as well. Can therefore create plants that are resistant to pests by giving them the nutrition that they need and by ensconcing them in biology that is a powerful protector and ensures that they're getting nutrients as well. That's one aspect of it. The other very important and really cool aspect is that we can use beneficial insects. You see, I once read a study which had something to the tune of for every one bad pest that we kill with a pesticide application, we kill 3,000 good guys. So there are way more good guys out there. And we can use those beneficial insects. We can craft systems where those beneficial insects decimate the bad guys. We can use insects for that. We can use birds for that, which is why agriculture has to be systemic. So when you design a farm, and a farm can be a three acre farm, it can be a 300 acre farm, it can be a 3,000 acre farm. You can design it in ways that engender biodiversity, where you have birds that are beneficial for you. In fact, there used to once upon a time be a study, an academic field called economic ornithology. Ornithology is a study of birds. Economic ornithology is the value that birds bring to humans. And that value runs an entire gamut but a big component of that is agriculture because they provide a lot of services and we'll talk about a couple of the ways they do that or we're trying for them to do that on our farm But birds are very important but sore insects. So I'll give you a very interesting example. One of the crops we're growing this year is a first time experiment on a relatively small scale, so just a few acres is red chilies. And chilies, the general recommendation in Pakistan for progressive growers is for them to do a weekly application of a pesticide, which over the entire crop cycle of chilis comes down to, we calculated for this year, about Rs. 34,000. And Alhamdulillah, knock on wood, we have saved those Rs. 34,000 per acre this year for each one of our acres that we planted this crop because we have good guys. Our crops are full of ladybugs and other incredible insects that are eating away the bad guys because we crafted a system where we have beneficial insectaries, we have certain flowering shrubs and plants around our crops which are providing the habitat for the good guys. And then there's another tool which is also related to insects, but you can actually sell insects. There's a type of company you can, or there's a type of sort of or organization you can craft called an insectory. An insectory is a place where you rare insects, basically good guy insects for certain pests. So one great and I'll mention this, this is really interesting. Of the biggest problems now in maize cultivation, maize has become one of Pakistan's major crops, right, whether it's for silage or whether it's for the grain itself. And one of the biggest threats to maize now is the fall army worm. And one of the enemies of the fall army worm is the Trichogramma wasp. And the trichogramma wasp you can actually get even in Pakistan you can get these insect cards which have little seeds of trichogramma wasp and you time it such where you know when the fall army worm is going to attack your maze crop and when the eggs hatch so you accordingly put a certain number of guards per acre those wasps hatch and they destroy the fall army worm and ensure that it doesn't cause your crop destruction right so we need more insectaries for all of our primary pests and we can resolve this issue because in nature everything eats something else. So we know and with the state of science in 2023, we pretty much know what pests oh sorry, what insects will eat which pest. And therefore, we can create systems both sort of on the farm scale, but also have companies that are providing these incredible biological solutions. Interesting. I saw a very interesting

sort of, what's the word for it, demonstration of this machine that uses AI to define both insects. So categorize insects and identify them and also design, also identify sort of weeds and यह जो आपके क्या खिलेंगे? जो takeover कर लेते हैं effectively, right? Plants के around. Yeah. और वह करती क्या है कि वह real time पर identify कर रही होती है using AI और वह real time पर laser इस्तेमाल करती है to destroy like like वह छोटी छोटी lasers चल रही हैं और वह machine चल रही है और वह run time पर जाना है you're seeing the different sparks happening. And what I found interesting there was obviously इसके नीचे comment section में people were just like, के जीति like Terminator waiting to happen. But what what I found interesting there was obviously कि it's what it's doing is it's optimizing कि जी वह जो आपने कहा कि broad brush is not like a broad spectrum antibiotic or like a carpet bombing of the entire thing but rather what it's doing is कि वह बहुत specific precision के साथ जो negative चीज़ है उसको मार रही और उसका कोई direct वह नहीं है impact on the surrounding. Right? So जो मैं अगर कोई herbicide या pesticide मारता हूं तो उसकी वह जो insect तो मर रहा है but बचा कुचा सारा का सारा plant में जा रहा है, बचा कुचा बाकी सारे insects और herbs को ही मार रहे हैं. How would you see that as a potential solution, you know in in in this? So एक तो again आपका degenerative farming है. एक आपका वह है कि यार मेरा एक पूरा food web है और मैं उस food web को optimize करने में लग जाऊं. But आप मुश्किल कहां है? Lot of ways. और उसका एक lazy boy solution जो है वह यह नज़र आता है कि यार ठीक है चलो वह तो मैं कर रहा हूं, कर लूंगा.

I think I'd say there are couple of thoughts. एक यह कि वह system बड़ा complicated लग रहा है जो शायद मैंने सही उसको बयान नहीं किया but actually अगर आप habitats अच्छी बना देते हैं हमने बहुत ज़्यादा thought नहीं इस chilly crop पर डाली थी because हम certified organic नहीं हैं तो हम obvious worst case में pesticide use कर लेते हैं but thankfully ज़रूरत you know हम learn नहीं पड़ी which is amazing. तो एक तो इतना ज़्यादा सोचने की ज़रूरत नहीं है as long as you create habitat काफी अच्छा scene हो सकता है for most crops. एक तो यह मैं कहूंगा. दूसरी बात यह है कि I do see a role for robots actually. But less so for insects, more for weeds. Weeds are a massive problem. And there are, I think I sort of briefly mentioned, there are companies that are tantalizingly close to, they've basically found extracted natural chemicals from plants. They've naturally derived, and those chemicals in at least some of their early studies are showing remarkable ability to, destroy weeds without causing the kind of weed resistance that we see with synthetic, with these uber synthetic, uber toxic sort of herbicides. But still, I think that's a few years away. And I think if we can get robots to do this in a cost effective way, I think it could be really beneficial. It could really help grow yields and there's nothing wrong in that because you're not really destroying nature. You're just eliminating certain weeds but आप कुछ soil को नहीं दबा कर रहे हैं. आप उसका कोई collateral damage नहीं cause कर रहे हैं. दो चीज़ें मैं और इसमें add करूंगा. एक अभी बड़ी fascinating study Cornell में हो रही है. So Cornell is a massive, it's a very big ag school. It's the only Ivy League that has an ag school. And I just connected with a researcher who is in the early stages of her research. She's a PhD student, and her preliminary results are showing that the more organic carbon is in a soil, the less there is a weed pressure. So that's, again, connecting to sort of this soil. It turns out that it is quite an incredible panacea to a lot of problems. And then another very interesting thing is that a weed is an indicator crop for the type of soil you have. Weeds So what are weeds? A weed is a term that humans have created for something that we are not growing. Oh, it's a weed, right? But basically, nature thinks that that thing should be growing because that sort of soil has a microbiome signature that is maybe devoid of a lot of microbes or doesn't have certain nutrients and therefore a plant is growing there that is best suited for that environment. Nature works in a model of succession. All the forests were once like, they were sort of grasslands with herbs or weeds and things like that. They became more shrublands, and then there were certain pioneering tree species. Then ultimately they became different tree species. So you have this biological succession. Nature wants certain plants to grow there. But if you change the microbial signature of soils if you improve them then over time weed pressures can also

be reduced. Interesting. So let's get get to the water the most important probably जो Pakistan में problem है कि आप सब कर लें अगर पानी नहीं है तो फिर घर जाएं. क्या फ़ायदा?

What's the thought there? बिल्कुल पानी पर आते हैं. लेकिन I would like to come back to the nutrition thing that you mentioned कि diabetes का crisis है. The government believes that thirty three percent of Pakistanis suffer from a mental health crisis. So this is really profound stuff. And I just want to briefly mention the role of nutrition in all of these things. I think Pakistani diets are generally unfit for a healthy lifestyle. We put too much oil in our foods, we overcook our foods, there's just not enough raw foods. Unfortunately, we have an economic system and situation where fruits and vegetables have become very expensive, fruits in particular. But I think even amongst the economic social strata that can afford fruits and vegetables, their consumption of those fruits and vegetables is much lower than what it should be. This is a big cause of a lot of these lifestyle diseases. On mental health, there's some amazing cutting edge research including a book a doctor and scientist at Columbia Med School who is a psychiatrist actually. He's written a book about how you can reverse depression, anxiety and depression, just by the foods you eat. So, foods that are really good for us, you know, nuts, seeds, you know, vegetables, foods that are high in polyphenols and anthocyanins, antioxidants. They are incredible for mental health as well. They're incredible for physical health. We know they help fight cancer. They're great for heart health. So it's all connected. It's one system, right? The human body. The other interesting thing is, and I really encourage people, even people who don't have farmland, I'd really like to get this message across through you, is that anyone or most people, they'll have either a little bit of a garden space in front of their house or the back of their house or they have a terrace. Even people who live in apartments, they might have a terrace. Everybody should be growing stuff there. And there are studies that showcase that, humans who interact with soil, and we do that when we're gardening, like vegetable gardening for example, those microbes in the soil can be very beneficial for us. And they actually help lower depression as well. And there are literally studies, really good studies that showcase this. So there is an enormous power in soil and you don't have to have ancestral land or you don't have to be really wealthy to buy agricultural land because it's really expensive in Pakistan. Farmers might be doing really poorly, a three acre farmer, but farmland in this country is extremely expensive. So you don't have to have that. You can be an urbanite. You can even live in an apartment and still get some of those benefits. And that food can be very, very nutritious for you. We'll talk about cycling of nutrients. The amazing thing would be if people and people in developed countries certainly do that. Some people, obviously, they take their kitchen wastes. They might have a small, sort of, home scale vermicomposting operation or some other composting operation and they sort of make compost, put that in their sort of planters where they're growing their carrots or their tomatoes, etc, etc. And that's an amazing source of nutrition. It's rich in biology because a compost is a biological degradation process, so it has lots of biology in it. It's great for the food you're growing. It'll be more nutrient dense. And also, those microbes are great when you're handling the soil. So just wanted to briefly mention that aspect because I believe that stunting and nutrition crisis in Pakistan, one thing you can do is fortify the wheat, which happens after you harvest. But what if your soil had the zinc, which was bioavailable, so your wheat was taking it up anyway and you didn't really need to do that synthetic zinc addition, right? So those sorts of things. Trace elements are very important for us. The copper and iron, all of these things are really good for us. And if we can get them from the food we eat, that would be amazing. And the food we eat can get it from the soil, right? So that's one thing. Now coming back to the water issue. You mentioned that the crucial Gulf and The Middle East makes a lot of its water from saltwater and that's very true and they use a process basically called desalination to do this. Now, what desalination basically does is that it makes the water, you pump out the seawater, you make it go through these membranes that basically separate the salts out. And then what you get on the other side is low TDS water, which can then be consumed by humans. It's very energy intensive. It uses a lot of fossil fuels. But that can be replaced by and we can see that the incredible progress that's been made with renewable energy, which is really exciting. But there is a problem there, right? It's a bit too good to be true. And the problem is that those The brine essentially. The brine. When you put that back in the water, the area and the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation and Nature, did a study a few years ago. And what they showed was that where you're putting the brine, those areas are becoming so salty that it's making life impossible for the fish that live there and so they're basically becoming these great dead zones. So that's really really bad because over decades the sprine accumulates, dead zone increases and that's really really bad. Thankfully there is a ray of hope here and Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a massive transformation. It's a game changing transformation that I personally didn't think would be ever possible but it is underway and it is truly profound. Part of this profound transformation is a massive emphasis on just greening the country. Big process of that is trees. There is a massive, like a gargantuan park that's been built in Riyadh right now. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, his highness wants to make Riyadh a capital of the globe. He wants to attract the best sort of minds and talent from across the world to come and live in Riyadh. And so there's a stunning park that's being built at the center of Riyadh where, I think over 150,000,000 trees are going to be planted. And just planting those trees, it's estimated, is going to bring the temperature of Riyadh down by more than three degrees Celsius. So that's one incredible thing. Now there's another thing the Crown Prince is doing and he unveiled it around Neom, the city or a string of developments that happening on the coast of the Red Sea. And that's a solar dome desalination, which is a game changer because it uses far less energy. And what you're doing is it's not a membrane. The process of sort of pushing that water through the membrane is extremely energy intensive. So this is a completely different way to desalinate. You've got these domes, and the water is sort of pumped into or taken through canals into these domes. And in the dome, just because you have this heat country, incredible heat, those domes concentrate that heat, the solar heat further and that water evaporates and as it goes and touches the top of the dome it sort of drips down. When it drips down it gets collected near the bottom as completely distilled fresh water. The brine remains at the bottom. But that brine actually has certain, metallic elements and it can be used in a bunch of industries. And their idea is not to throw it back into the ocean, but then to use those. To essentially harvest it and,

you know, up secondary and third year processes through.

Exactly, exactly. And it's much cheaper. And that could be a massive solution for coastal areas across the developed world. I mean, I can see a future in the coastal areas of Sindh and Balochistan where we have this technology and we're doing incredible farming. It could be something like palm oil which is an import substitution for the other oil problem this country has or it could be many other value added crops. Could be other value added horticulture for export, local consumption. There are enormous opportunities and possibilities that open up. That's a hopeful So that's the potential of creating water. Yes, exactly.

What about the existing water? And I'll break this down into two areas. First is the the the efficient usage of said water. उसमें farming के अंदर question arises कि are we wasting water? और जो क्यों वह waste हो रहा और किस तरीके से उसको बेहतर किया जा सकता है और दूसरा यह है कि जो आपका distribution है so again Pakistan में ना I'll I'll try this back again to what I mentioned earlier where we say कि housing societies वन रही हैं और उसकी वैसे farmland तबाह हो रहा है. I I don't know like कोई वाली बात है if you travel around the world तो people would realize for a country of 220,000,000 people we haven't really populated this country. हम तो एक एक घर के अंदर जो है वह बीस बीस बंदे का खानदान रह रहे हैं. Right? दुनिया में तो लोग nuclear families में रहकर, you know, humans really leave a footprint. हमारा दुसरा से अभी है ही नहीं. But अगर मैं honestly ऊपर से देखूं ना live satellite से थोड़ा क़रीब आकर तो it's a very narrow strip जो rivers के around चल रही है और उसके around हमने हम रह रहे हैं. Even आधे घंटे का जो patch है ना हैदराबाद से पहले आपको ख़ाली दिखता है सारा, right? आप बलूचि से आ जाएं ख़ाली पड़ा हुआ है. और उससे मुझे यह sense मिलती है कि यार it's हमने तो land को use ही नहीं करना शुरू किया अभी. हमारा तो land randomly पड़ा है. हमें पता भी नहीं. In a lot of ways we don't even know उस land के नीचे क्या कुछ पड़ा हुआ है जो कि हम बेच के पैसे कमा सकते हैं. But चलो वह तो उसके भी अलग problems हैं. उसके ऊपर आप क्या कुछ नहीं बना सकते settlements, ये वो. So obviously infrastructure creates a lot of opportunity and value you know with the with the road network, with CPAC, Western route जगहें खुलना शुरू होंगी. But जगहों के अंदर तब तक settlements and and and value addition तब तक नहीं होगी जब तक अब कुछ basic energy connectivity and water connectivity, you know जो कि एक basic life चाहे वह इंसान की life हो, जानवर की life हो या agriculture की life हो वह हो सके. So distribution of water आपने बोला कि you know हमने मुगल ने बनाया, British ने बनाया, उसके बाद fifty sixty में थोड़ा सा बना लिया उसके बाद कोई थोड़ा सा कोई आगे कोई canal system announce कर देता है but by enlarge we haven't done a lot of work over the last seventy years both in terms of you know conserving water in the sense कि एक तो मतलब dam stamps नहीं बनाए हमने And I also want your opinion on कि उसका कोई counter है कि नहीं but we'll we'll get to that. But ना ही हमने अपने distribution channels को बढ़ाया. So जो है उसी में से ही हम कुछ ना कुछ निकालने की कोशिश कर रहे हैं. So इस context में जब मैं आपसे अगर मैं आपसे पूछूं कि water का how do you see that? बहुत लंबा हो गया तो मैं इसको वापस आकर summarize करता हूं. Existing water की usage और extension of said water reserves distribution किस तरह से आप देख रहे हैं इसको?

तो इसमें मैं यह कहूंगा कि पानी का ज़ियादा हमारे मुल्क में बहुत ज़्यादा है and that's without any speck of doubt. Some people claim that as much as about 90% of this country's water is consumed by agriculture. The global average is about 70% and of course the most efficient countries in the world use far less than that as well.

But I think we shouldn't take those countries as guideposts because they are very unique. There is a level of intellectual and technical capital there and financial capital that's you know eon. I think उसको उन countries को हम as a shoot for the star देख सकते हैं कि eventually हम वहां पर पहुंच जाएंगे. But you are right कि right now I mean you can't go from brain dead farming to hydroponics. Right? Like you will have to cross a lot of different steps before you can potentially even begin to dream about that. Absolutely. Also hydroponics

is good for certain types of horticulture. I mean, good for strawberries, tomatoes, leafy greens.

But it is, you can't really do grains, right? Grains are a big part of I mean hydroponics की example या vertical farming कह लें कि वह इसकी example मेरी है कि very sort of technologically advanced, very sort of energy intensive. वह developed economies में चल जाएंगी या even Middle East में चल जाएंगी जहां पर cost of procuring set वह अगर मुझे Pakistan से मंगवाना है तो मैं देख रहा था आलू पाकिस्तानी आलू जो है वह वहां पर मिलता कोई तकरीबन बारह सौ रुपए का एक किलो मिलता है. तो आप लोग जो लेते हैं थोड़ी सी कदर करें उसकी.

But you know उस sense में of course वह बहुत different है for that economy versus Pakistan. बिल्कुल. But the main question बिल्कुल आप मुझे सही कहा. The main question in our country is what is the root of the wastage that's happening in agriculture? And बिल्कुल I think we can be a water abundant country. I have sort of zero doubt about that at this point. मैं भी बड़ा डरा था like PA Pakistan Water Research Council ने बड़ी एक sensationalist किस्म की report निकाली थी maybe like 2018 or something by 2025. We're run out of water and you know god forbid I don't think that you know that's going to happen but we do need to manage our resources much much much better. हो यह रहा है हमारे यहां जो paradigm of irrigation है, वह largely flood irrigation है. Almost सारा agriculture हमारा flood irrigation पर मदनी है. Flood irrigation is extraordinarily wasteful because we're we just flood the entire field with an enormous amount of water. We're using way too much. It's also really bad for the soil because you're drowning the soil again and again. So it's really bad for that. It's causing methane emissions. And it's not good for plants also because they suddenly they just get like drowned, you know. So I think technologies that can take us away from that. So there's obviously drip, which everyone knows about, which you can use for certain specialty horticulture. You can use it for certain vegetables. You can use it for, you know, tree crops, right, your fruits and nuts. But there's also central pivots, which are an irrigation technology that's an overhead technology that moves in a circular motion. There are sprinklers yes that are above the crop and then you have impact sprinklers - well, I guess all sprinklers are above the crop, but basically they dangle from a system that is over - What is like machine COT, lamés, el clevel, o sea, y esas. And it moves exactly in a circular motion, which is why from the air you can see these crop circles. In places like the Midwest in The US, you'll see miles of crop circles. So in Pakistan, the central pivot systems have slowly started to increase in number, and this change over the past three, four years has been quite tremendous. Do we have such machinery and Yes, equipment on the farmland that I have the privilege of working at, we have some central pivot systems as well. So, and they exist in many other farmland in this country and the interest in them is increasing. In fact, today I found out that heavy industry staxilla is going to start indigenously manufacturing center pivots, which is really cool. If they can do it in a cost efficient way and if it's indigenous, I think it will be remarkable. So that's one sort of technology. But then there's impact sprinklers, which I am also a big fan of. And the government of Pakistan with World Bank funding has a very generous subsidy underway for impact sprinkler systems which are basically you have like these sprinkler hydrants all over your fields which will sprinkler irrigate your crop and you can save 50 to 60% water with impact sprinklers and as you can also do with central pivots by So fifty-sixty percent is huge. It's a massive saving with drip also you can get about 60% on average. But if you improve soils or let's talk about tree crops for example. You mulch your tree crops and mulch is if you take like a layer of carbonaceous material like straw, let's take wheat straw, rice straw and you put it on the basins of your trees where your drip lines are going. There are studies out of Peru. I was just speaking to someone in Scandinavia the other day and they did this study where they had moisture probes in actually. It's a really good study. In Peru, in desert like climates or sandy soils, They did a side by side trial drip irrigated fruiting crops, tree crops where some were mulched and the control was unmulched. So drip, जो saving की पानी की वह तो दोनों जगह हुई लेकिन जो mulched area था वह था 40% additional savings in water हुई. Because mulch is a incredible thing that keeps the water in the soil. It doesn't allow for that to evaporate and it keeps the soil moisture cool in the summers which is really good for the plants and for the soil and in the winter it'll keep it warm so it's like a layer of clothing. So mulching is really really important. The soil should always be covered with either something living or something dead but an organic material. So that's one thing. And then let's come to impact sprinklers and just generally regenerative agriculture. If you build soil health, soil that is rich in carbon and organic matter has an incredible capacity to store water. For every 1% of organic matter that we add in our soils, you have the capacity per acre to store 30,000 gallons of water. This is huge, right? And that's for every 1% of organic matter. Now, what is the organic matter in Pakistani soils today? On the soils that we operate on, which is just pure sand of the Thal Desert, we found out that our soils were a whopping 0% of organic matter. But generally in Pakistan now we have, it's thought to be about 0.3 to 0.4% organic matter, which is extremely low. But through a series of techniques, we can dramatically enhance that organic matter and therefore dramatically. Even in that sort of extremely inhospitable,

warm or hot climate,

यह possible है? बिल्कुल possible है. As long as you have access to water, you can craft agro ecological and agricultural systems where you can do this. You can actually do it at a considerably rapid clip in fact यह नहीं है आपको दस साल इंतज़ार करना है. यह process बड़ा quickly हो सकता है और एक और interesting बात यह है. Soil scientist for a very long time thought कि एक area में before farming began जो organic matter था उससे ज़्यादा humans exceed नहीं कर सकते. But amazing thing is that farmers all over the world are disproving this theory by actually showing, let's say Mid West United States made your prairie lands say 8% carbon thaw or 7% carbon thaw before farming began. There are farmers who have crafted systems where they've taken that to ten, eleven, 12% carbon, which is amazing. If you could do that at scale all over the world, actually studies show that if you could do this level, you may get know, at just 10% of the global farmland, we could reverse climate change. But a lesser version of regenerative agriculture if done on 50% of global farmland could also reverse climate change. So this is an incredible story of hope. But the soil can be a solution to so many problems. We talked about nutrient density, we talked about biodiversity crisis, we talked about limiting pesticides and fertilizers or even ultimately eliminating them. We talked about higher yields for plants, we talked about water storage. So it's really a gift that keeps on giving. As a smorgasbord of solutions. It's like a Swiss army knife of solutions if you will. Makes sense. What about again waters जो आपने यह वाला part तो कर दिया कि जो पानी है उसको efficiently किस तरीके से इस्तेमाल किया जा सकता है. What about distribution and storage of water? Both

in the in the context of कि अभी हमारे पास जो ज़्यादातर पानी हम store कर रहे हैं, वह हम कर रहे हैं through some form of dams. We're making a lot of dams as well so at least एक certain amount of storage बढ़ जाएगी और वह upstream है तो उससे potentially flooding वगैरह भी control हो सकती है potentially question mark. But then also जो आपके rivers already flow कर रहे हैं उसको आप further किस तरह distribute कर सकते हैं in a sustainable way. So एक मतलब major यह आ रहा है कि जहां पर हमने rivers को मज़ीद distribute कर कर कर कर हमने पानी हर जगह से ले लिया तो उससे नीचे आपके जो delta basins हैं और वह mangroves हैं वह destroy होना शुरू हो गए हैं वह सारा का सारा जो है नज़ाहिर है कि वहां पर पानी ही नहीं पहुंच पा रहा. Obviously potentially उसका आपने एक solution start में बता दिया कि in its eventuality if the dome structure works for Saudis potentially that could come to us as well and हम जो coastal area का water requirement है वह वहां से पूरी कर सकते हैं. Water requirement शायद पूरी कर सकते हैं लेकिन जो again delta का जो आपका वह है वह again natural system से ही sustain होगा. वह एक question mark है. But distribution and storage, what are your thoughts on that?

Sure thing, absolutely. That's another great question. So I think I'll begin with, let's begin with the fact that currently Pakistan has about thirty days of water storage which is thought to be very low. India has significantly higher. Egypt has nine hundred days of storage, another desert agricultural economy right much similar to ours fed by agriculture. They they how did Egypt

have nine hundred days considering कि हमारी तो पहाड़ियां हैं हमने तो चार दीवारें डालनी हैं अडायम वन जाना है. Exactly.

जोड़ा Amazing मेरा खाले मैं मैं अब आपने कह दिया मेरा भी शायद नहीं है. अब सब फ़ज़र से कहती है कि this is what I'll be doing. तो तो एक तो यह बात होगी कि storage को किया जब storage में बड़े सारे issues आते हैं उसको ecologically sensitive कैसे बनाना है दुनिया में कुछ जगहों पर dams ऐसे बनाए गए हैं जहां पर कुछ stairways बनाई हैं जिस which allows for freshwater fish to be able to move around which is obviously very good Of course dam की एक काफी बड़ी ecological cost भी होती है लेकिन उसके फवायद भी बहुत सारे होते हैं हमारी economy को बहुत tremendous obviously फवायद हुए हैं. I think एक balance लेना बड़ा ज़रूरी है इस चीज़ में But जो low hanging fruit मैंने बताया जिस तरह soil का right. मैं आपको एक और flooding की आपने बड़ी ज़बरदस्तीस बात की और flooding की मैं आपको बहुत कमाल मिसाल देना चाहता हूं. Pakistan में last year flooding unfortunately हुई mass scale पर was very devastating but few months after that you also had some major flooding happening in California. I don't know if you remember if you saw that in the news but there was again यही हुआ बारिश की भरमार हुई because that's what happening with damages you have these like cloud bursts and suddenly you get way more water than the land could traditionally absorb and so you had orchards because California is like the horticulture bread basket of The United States fruits, nuts, orchards, vegetable crops. You had a lot of orchards that were just sort of soaked in water, flooded. And there's a fantastic Washington Post piece and I'm really glad that it got mainstream coverage where you had regenerative farmers - I think they were armored farmers perhaps - whose lands, their neighboring farmers were completely flooded. They got the same amount of rain and yet there was no flooding at all. And why was that? Because their soils were soaking up all of that water, which is amazing. And as it's being soaked, it's also trickling down to the underground aquifer and sort of, you know, replenishing that. So how is that happening? What's the difference between the water? Because what they were doing in their case, this is an orchard, right? So what they were doing was that in between their tree rows they had a series of very diverse cover crops. Cover crops are plants that humans plant. And there's synergistic crops you plant that are really good for building soil health. There's a lot of science behind sort of, you know, crafting that diversity, having different families present and so on and so forth. But what they had done was by doing that, they had really high organic matter soil, and the sponginess that I just mentioned of the organic matter allowed them to escape the flooding. So again, with regenerative agriculture, it helps with so many of these climatic vagaries. It will help you with drought because you'll have water stored in the soil. It'll be more moist, and it will help with these flooding events. So I think it should be a national security priority. It's not a luxury. And for so many reasons, this is something that has to be done. And those are sort of some of the systems that we're doing in our orchards as well. We are working very hard to make that both a reality and a showpiece. We can talk more about that. Now, I also want to mention one very important thing which in some sort of niches has become a very famous regenerate farmer by the name of Ernst Gosch and he has this very pithy quote which is water is planted. And I really want to talk about what's called the small water cycle. So most people think that the water cycle is determined entirely by the oceans, right? And the oceans bring in the clouds. You have evaporation, makes the clouds. The clouds then drift onto land, and that's what gives us rain. And this is true, but it's only partially true. About 60% of the water cycle for water we receive on land is driven by the oceans, but 40% is driven, which is like almost half really, is driven by the land. So the more green cover you have on land, the more evapotranspiration and you can actually create rain. And there are farmers who have done that with sufficient scale. They have created so much green biomass that they literally have far more cloud cover. And we've seen like sort of airplane shots of their farms next to barren farmland around them which was deforested decades ago. This is in Brazil by the way and उनका cloud cover ही नहीं है. Isn't that incredible? So water can be created which is why the 10,000,000,000 tree tsunami was such a brilliant idea. It can save Pakistan. It is the need of the hour in urban areas but also in rural areas. In rural areas it does this thing on scale when you have this plantation. You can actually have much more rain in Pakistan and the country can be transformed from this semi arid, desert like country to a much more verdant landscape and all the attenuating benefits that that brings to a populace. But also you can sort of, the benefit you can get in urban areas is that we have a World Bank study which shows that if you have enough trees in urban areas, it can reduce temperatures by a whopping five to eight degrees Celsius. That's one thing. There are other studies that showcase that crime is much lower in areas that have a lot of greenery. Mental health is much better in areas that have a lot of greenery as opposed to the same part of the city. So in the same city, different part where you have much lower greenery. The benefit, it's a cascading series of benefits that bringing in this biology, bringing in trees brings to our urban and rural settings and it can transform the country. So that's really, really important to bear in mind as well. And then the last thing you mentioned was the distribution aspect. And this is really important and this is something the government is the only entity that can really do. And this has to do with part of our political, economic, and power structures is such that unfortunately certain big farmers take a lot more water than is allotted to them. I think it's essential for government to have metering systems. It's an investment that this country has to make. Once you do that, you create these allotments that are fair. But then you also give farmers the tools, which includes certain sort of financing and subsidies for these irrigation technologies we spoke about that dramatically reduce the amount of water, but also giving them the tools or teaching them the tools to increase their soil organic matter. All of that will lead to significantly reducing our water on farm. So we can actually cultivate a lot more barren land in this country that is cultivatable but doesn't have access to water. It is my humble opinion and hope that we will still have water trickling down into the Indus Delta which is very important. It's a national asset of brobding noggin proportions. Mangroves are mind blowing gifts of God. They are thought to sequester 10 times more carbon than terrestrial trees. They are amazing repositories for sea life, including fish and shrimp, etc, which have an economic value. Fishing communities that rely on that for both their protein needs, but also for, you know, as a fisherman, catch it and sell it. And so the more mangroves you have, the more fish and shrimp you're going to have, the better for people's consumption, the better for, you know, if you want to export. So the potential is massive, and I generally believe that mangroves are a crucial part of what should be Pakistan's economic but also ecological strategy to build what I call a regenerative economy.

Makes sense. Where is the one hour fifty minute mark? So I just wanna I mean I had a few areas to discuss but I'll just wrap this up. It's a it's a for the viewers 01:35AM. So मैं थोड़ा सा आपसे मैंने actually दो तीन areas discuss करने थे particularly Pakistan's potential for trade. We'll leave it for a for a better time. एक चीज़ जो कि मैं बहुत चाहता हूं कि people have an understanding because we have this myth of breaking down and you've mentioned this before कि, you know, हमने multiple तरीकों से करना है. I don't have a problem with small pieces of land जिसमें farmers जो हैं, generational farmers जो हैं, वह छोटे छोटे छोटे छोटे छोटे lands के ऊपर अपना crop उगा रहे हैं और survive कर रहे हैं. But I also believe that Pakistan really really needs corporate farming. We need economy of scale. We need optimization of resources and that only happens when you have the structure जिसके अंदर capital भी flow कर सके. मैं for example I'm very interested in agriculture. I just don't have the time for it, you know. And if for example you're doing a good job, एक तो तरीका यह है कि मैं coffee पर आपसे मिलूं मैं कहूं यार यह भाई मेरे पांच करोड़ रुपया लें और जो भी कर रहे हैं करते रहे और फिर हम बाद में देखी जाएंगे और आप फिर fraud करके मुझे बाहर जाए. दूसरा तरीका यह है कि आप अपना यह धंधा करें और जब आप बड़े हो जाएं तो आप stock exchange में रहकर fraud करें और मैं जाकर आपके stocks खरीदूं and everything is properly governed and everything is properly regulated and you know capital can flow from the urban areas all the way down to the rural and you can then utilize that capital to invest and increase the efficiency, the productivity and really begin to innovate. I personally think Pakistan maybe haven't even touched the surface of innovation in farming. I think if we are able to do that we can just radically change क्योंकि I think at the heart and core is farming. वह आप चीज़ set कर लेना, उसके ऊपर बहुत सारी चीज़ें आप build कर सकते हैं. And so what are your thoughts? I know I do know that आज का जो आपका seminar था that had to do with corporate farming as well and so that's going to be a little insightful in beginning to understand what the government's thought process is as well. If you could, if you are willing to share कि what was the hypothesis shared there? What were the thoughts there? And then what are your thoughts on corporate farming, on large scale farming?

And how do you see that ecosystem growing in Pakistan? That's a great question. I think that's a question that probably a lot of people have in their minds as well. What is the future of agriculture in Pakistan? What sort of models do we need? Today's session at the Jinnah Convention Center was, I would say, entirely dominated by this philosophical disposition of corporate farming as the solution to Pakistan's crisis. And there the idea was that we have about 9,000,000 acres of uncultivated lands and we should do corporate farming there provide water through certain irrigation systems, through certain canal systems and also through the use of the underground aquifers and really populate those areas. Have large scale farms with high yields, use a lot of smart technologies, use a lot of these great micro irrigation technologies, really be efficient, use satellites, drones. That was the paradigm that was being discussed over there. And I think that just for context,

they are mentioning five-nine million acres. What's the total? Do you have an idea? Do you have a number कि Pakistan में कितने acre के ऊपर farming हो रही है actually?

गालेबंद मेरा खाला है something like 25 ish million acres, if memory serves me correct. I have searched that number but I think that's round about what it is. So, I think that Pakistan needs a twin track system. I think that corporate farming 100% has, or large scale, I don't like to call it corporate farming. I think it just sounds very, I don't know, unvoke for want of a better word. But it just sounds very austere. I like to think of modern, large scale science based agriculture. It's how I would probably call it using all the fruits of the technologies that are at our disposal and doing it at scale which is what makes it viable. But I think in that model what was missing really was this emphasis on soil health which is essential. So you can do that on large scale farming systems as well, which is what we have the privilege of doing on our farming systems in Rehimabad, in the Thal Desert as well, where I've crafted what I've called an integrative regenerative system that I've called drawdown farming. And that I think is crucial. So we have to do that. That's one of the paths we have to take and I think the dividends are going to be incredible. Just emphasize on soil as we do these things is you can use all sorts of sensors and drones and mechanization with an emphasis on soil. It's just that, you know, in fact, on this mass scale, some things become easier. You can have these incredible modern no till drills, so you're actually eliminating tillage. Can, by the use of these irrigation systems like central pivots, can do micro fertilization. It's called fertigation when you fertilize and irrigate together. When you do that and you apply biology as well and the right kind of fertilizers, better fertilizers, more biologically derived fertilizers, it could be a massive game changer. You can convert these deserts into fertile soil. One of the things interestingly enough at this seminar, the mistress of ceremony said that Pakistan has been blessed with ample sunlight, ample water, and fertile soil. While the former too, I agree, it's a great blessing to have these waterways and the sunlight, but the fertile soil thing is completely incorrect. We do not have fertile soil. We're able to grow things because we have the water and the sun, but our yields are so much lower than your Thailand and Indias and Egypt on pretty much everything because your soil one of the reasons being your soil is not fertile. But we can make it fertile. You actually can't really invent water or thin air. I mean, it's very difficult. We just talked about that. But you can't get more sunlight. Let's say if you're in a Northern European country, amount of sunlight you're getting is the amount of sunlight you're getting, right? But you can actually create soil, which is an amazing thing. And we now have the science that shows us how and the practitioners have led the way. So that's amazing on the corporate farming side of things. But there's one other component of this that was completely missing from today's seminar and event which was, as we discussed earlier, graced by the Prime Minister and the Army Chief and Bevi of Ministers with their retinues. And I think this is driven by the FOG Foundation. Today's event is their idea is to attract investors, both local and foreign, and get the big bucks in so that you can grow a series of crops, whether it's oil crops, whether it's fodder crops for animals, whether it's grain crops like your wheat and maize, and some of it for our country's consumption, some of it for exports, especially with Gulf investors who are food insecure. They bring in the money and then the commodities go over there. That's a model. A lot of the investment is indigenous. I think we have in our country the capital. We don't have the capital for large scale industries, for a lot of energy projects, for dams, which can run into tens of billions. But I think this country definitely has the capital, which should be channeled and pooled in. Banks need to play a role. The state bank and the government need to play a very important role in this to create an investable sort of a system. Now, coming to the other side, which is smallholder farmers. In Pakistan, the average landholding is two or three acres or so. It's thought to be less than five acres certainly for more than 90% of farmers. And this is about the same as it is for Thailand, their productivity is much higher. I think that we can dramatically increase the yields of the smallholder farming. The mechanized system is great for large farmholding because you can't manage large farms without this and so if you're going to populate the Thal Desert and the Cholasthan Desert and create these belts for agriculture of course you need those systems. I'm not saying you shouldn't have those systems but the smallholder farmer who exists right with his family, is living on his land, he needs a system that's working for him. And that system is possible. It's not theoretical. It exists. In our neighboring country of India, there were trials done with regenerative organic farming, so zero synthetics. And the trials, there was an American company that did these studies and funded them. They worked with a series of farmers, smallholders in India. And there they said the farmers should not have more than two acres because they said that a husband and wife alone should be able to work the land. So it should be manageable. But what they saw was a six to eight times increase in productivity. Because what's happening today is that farmers are growing mono crops and they're managing them poorly. They don't have those fancy equipment to increase the productivity which only big farmers can do. And there's talk in Pakistan that we'll create cooperatives and pool in farmers but who's going to finance that? Unfortunately the social structures are such that people don't really get along very well like I've come across many rural people who have these long lasting feuds with their neighbors and you want to create a cooperative out of it I think that's a bit behind the sky. Might be possible in some locations and cases but it's definitely not applicable to the entirety of the country. So what you need is a different model and what the example that I just quoted out of India is you're doing a lot of intercropping, you're doing massive intensification. A level of intensification which is impossible to do on a mass scale, but is much easier to do on a micro scale. You have tree crops growing that are synergistic. You have vine crops and shrub crops. You have, sort of, you know, your annual crops, grains of different types, intercrop with legumes. And it's all manageable by a couple or their family because they have the labor, they can work the land and their productivity is extremely high. If you have six to eight times higher productivity, imagine what that means on a village scale or on a district scale. It means you have six to eight times productivity for the things you have now and you can do incredible value additions. And the potential that's one step after that, once you enhance this productivity, is because you're growing, you know, so many different things. A farmer will be growing some grains and legumes together. He'll have some fruits, but he can also have some flowering shrubs, like maybe jasmine or something. So you can create these clusters on pooling a few villages together where you're doing some sort of value addition. And that's where ideally the government should help create these cooperatives. Where you're giving shareholding to people but it's being managed in a public private partnership sort of model with investors where maybe you'll have a pickling factory or a jam making factory or an essential oil manufacturing that's taking essential oils out of roses or jasmine and you're doing this value addition that you're then exporting because the money you can earn from value addition or high value horticulture even is much higher than commodities can ever give you, than what selling roadgrass hay or alfalfa hay could ever give you. So that model I think is what we need on the small scale villagers. We can up level their skills. But this a whole of government and whole of society approach. You will have to change the education paradigm. The education that rural people are receiving is of a really poor quality. But they don't necessarily need the kind of education that is definitely going to make them engineers and doctors and lawyers and lahore. What you need to teach many of them are the skills that they can take back to the land. Because agriculture is a deeply scientific profession as perhaps this conversation would have highlighted. And you need for farmers to understand. How do you explain to a farmer what is fungi? पपुंडी is the closest word that comes to mind but that has a negative connotation. How do you tell them that oh, जरसीम आप पैदा कर रहे हैं अपनी ज़मीन में. They are thinking क्या बात कर रहा है बंदा? Right? So the language at least in their sort of linguistic arena, these terms don't exist. How do you explain things to them? And I think that the education system needs to start teaching biology and chemistry to these farmers in a way that they can understand, that they can relate to as opposed to this rote learning, silly rote learning model we have. And that's also where, we can have a different conversation about that another day, but I think that's where tech really can come in handy. We can have blended learning systems. Are some great examples out there in the world because teacher quality is really hard to do. With blended learning you can have exceptionally made videos that are really interactive that you can have like this sort of smart TV even one smart TV in a school and each class gets one hour with it every day. And they're learning chemistry and biology and sciences and languages and different things because you've got these incredible, really sort of gripping videos that are teaching the kids these tools. And they can then apply it to their, in their lives, in their rural economies, right? And the brightest of them, of course, then move up the ladder and they go into the cities and the universities and so on and so forth. Makes sense. I'm gonna wrap this up. Put up the two

hour, six minute mark. I'm gonna ask you one question that I generally ask all of my guests and I'd love your insight on that. You were born and you grew up for most part in Pakistan. Then you went to The US, you stayed there, then you came back. ज़हर है कोई फलसफा होगा, कोई vision होगा. And then for whatever reason you had to go back to The US, but you still fully focused on growing, you know, within Pakistan. How do you see Pakistan twenty seven years from now in 2050? Knowing all of what you know now, seeing all of what you've seen. And again, इसमें मैं एक एक वह कुछ add करूंगा, handicap mode जिसमें आप यह नहीं कह सकते कि Pakistan की youth population बहुत ज़्यादा है. आप यह नहीं कह सकते कि जी Pakistan में बड़ा talent है तो यह arbitrary statements नहीं and also ifs नहीं हो सकते कि अगर यह हो गया तो यह हो जाएगा. I want you to see what's happening right now, see the environment around you, the data around you and extrapolate from within that कि how do you see Pakistan knowing what you know now, seeing what you've seen over the course of your life?

That's a tough one given all of the conditionalities that you've imposed. I think 2050 could be a very different Pakistan in a good way. I think I personally sort of have grappled with this a lot and I've swung quite wildly like a pendulum between a pretty deep despondency and a moderately cautious, but enthusiastic optimism. And I think that potential is there where this country can be completely transformed. I think I saw a little glimmer of that this morning with this emphasis on agriculture. Because I've been saying this, I've been sort of preaching this for the past seven years when I realized that agriculture really is an agriculture economy. We're not high-tech innovators. This is where it has to begin and then the chains go up from there. If you want to build a bio based regenerative circular economy, it's the agriculture that feeds everything else. You need more trees, some of them get harvested, you make products out of that, you need more cotton, you need more everything. And I think the potential can be massive. There are technologies that are being developed at a rapid clip, which if Pakistan implements, could be game changing. So there's agriculture, there's energy. Pakistan can be entirely energy independent. We can have concentrated solar in this country that's baseload renewable energy that can be very cheap. You can use some of that energy to make green hydrogen which means you don't have to import any oil and all your vehicles run on your own indigenous green hydrogen. In fact because of the high solar insulation in this country, your green hydrogen could be some of the cheapest in the world, so maybe you can export to some other countries as well. So there is enormous potential, but like everything else, you have to harness that potential. I think that I am at this point today I mean perhaps if you ask this question you know a couple weeks later it might be a different answer because of this pendulum that I mentioned but I am optimistic I think I think that there is potential There is also now a greater understanding and hunger for change than I have ever seen. And I think that that will bode well for this country because there is a much greater understanding today of both the problems of this country and also perhaps some of the solutions than there definitely was three years ago, definitely five years ago and that's really really good. Nobody used to talk about the balance of payment crisis until about maybe two years ago. Now everybody knows about this. What is the macro economy? What are the main crises? This is a really good thing. Agriculture, food, everyone is now talking about that. COVID, especially the Russia-Ukraine war really helped with that. So I think these are climate change. You know, because of all of these crises, out of these crises, the ray of hope is that there is a much greater understanding because people used to dismiss, people used to make friends. A friend who went to Oxford who comes from a traditional business family and he just came right back after university. He used to make fun of me when I used to talk about climate change, dismiss it entirely off hand a few years ago. These are just the vagaries of nature. There's no such thing. And other people as well, even well educated people. Oh, this is a conspiracy to stop China from growing, yada yada. Now everybody knows it's a reality. It's a lived reality. And so I think that out of these polycrisis, there is hope for transformation. So I think that this country can achieve a lot. I genuinely do believe that this country has enormous potential. And I think that it can be a regional powerhouse and it can be a contributor to peace and prosperity in this wider Minasaka region. It can be actually a major pillar and that's the kind of country I certainly pray and hope for in 2050.

Well, hope we can see that. Thank you for the optimism. There's very little to go by these days and so I hope that I've be able to see some of that as well. But thank you so much for coming in and sharing all that insight. This was super super insightful, one of the longest conversations we've had over the last year. And I can tell you this is just 40% of what I had planned. So there's definitely, if possible, a part two that will do sometime in the future. तेमुर thank you so much for coming in and sharing all that insight. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. And for all of you guys thank you so much for watching. अगर आपके यहां पर आए हैं तो दोस्तों के साथ ज़रूर share करिएगा. नीचे comment section में मुझे आकर बताएं what do you think about agriculture? Do you guys have farmland? Viewers हमें support कर सकते हैं. We have a Stripe link and you can use a credit card to support us and keep us independent. But anyways, this was the second ज़मीर एहसान ज़ैदी you were watching taught behind things. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.