Farming news for every village in Pakistan
Agriculture is not a sideline story in Pakistan — it is the story. Millions of households depend on it, and yet for years it has been covered as an afterthought, squeezed between market prices and weather bulletins. The Association of Agricultural & Environmental Journalists, Pakistan (AAEJ) exists to change that.
Founded in 2016, AAEJ built a national network from the ground up, reaching into Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan — a footprint that reflects the scale of the country it covers. Since 2019, that network has been affiliated with the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ), giving members access to international knowledge exchange most had never had before.
The guild has been candid about how hard this has been. As a self-funded organisation, AAEJ has spent years stretching limited resources across training, outreach, and basic operations, often without the tools or connectivity that make modern reporting easier elsewhere. Members have pushed forward research on subjects as specific as rosewood conservation and mushroom farming, and built working relationships with government bodies, universities, and farmer organisations. It’s the kind of trust that isn’t built quickly. AAEJ has had to earn it one relationship at a time.
Press freedom has been part of that fight too. Under President Shahzad Syed, AAEJ organised a nationwide Train March for Freedom of the Press, confronting the misuse of legal mechanisms — including false FIRs — against journalists covering sensitive stories. It was a statement that agricultural journalism in Pakistan will not be quietly pressured into silence.
For AAEJ’s members, this work is personal. “It’s not simply about the crops and markets,” says member Muhammad Idrees. “It’s about livelihood. It’s about water, food security, and environmental survival.” That conviction runs through the guild — in Ali Farooq’s insistence on bringing farmers’ “problems, experiences, achievements, and needs” directly to decision-makers, and in Saima Bhatti’s vision of a guild strong enough that “farming news reaches every village of Pakistan.”
That vision is still some distance away, and AAEJ knows it. What the guild has now is a committed core team, hard-won institutional relationships, and a track record of persistence through years of financial strain. What it doesn’t yet have is the structure to turn that persistence into something durable — a functioning secretariat, a sustainable funding base, consistent professional development for its members.
The JumpStart programme is where AAEJ wants to close that gap. Over the next two years, the guild is partnering with JumpStart not to become a different organisation, but to finally build the one it has always envisioned.
Over the next two years, AAEJ will be working toward accomplishing three concrete goals: establishing a permanent secretariat and dedicated agricultural journalism institute; creating structured fellowships and training exchanges for young, early-career rural journalists; and building a sustainable funding base that will allow the guild to grow its membership and develop local leadership across the country.
Agricultural journalism in Pakistan is growing. Help it get there.
