This study examines the role of public investment in determining the pattern of agricultural development in Pakistan. The focus is on investment in irrigation, which is seen to be the key to providing food self-sufficiency and allowing Pakistan to sustain a flows of net agricultural exports. Together with the physical and institutional infrastructure supporting agriculture, these investments set the stage and the pattern for the country's economic development.

Agricultural development in Pakistan has in the past century and a half been driven mainly by horizontal expansion: increasing the area under the plough by increasing water control. Since the late 1960s, intensification has increased, though this has remained limited to individual crops and has not evolved into a broad strategy. Because of the environmental and other limits to further expansion of controlled water flows, the future calls for a strategy of more efficient use of available land and water, and a more ...