Taimur Malik ’11

In 2016, Taimur Malik ’11 was the interim CEO of a Pakistani textile mill when a weevil infestation devastated the country’s cotton industry. Malik learned that the genetically modified seeds used by most Pakistani cotton farms were especially susceptible to infestation. He thought back to other disasters that had struck his country, like the 2010 floods that left roughly 20 million people homeless and the subsequent heatwaves that wreaked further havoc on Pakistan’s crops. These events opened his eyes to the risks of non-organic farming and climate change. He decided to take action, launching a large-scale, regenerative farm in Pakistan’s Thal Desert to show that making local changes can have a big environmental and economic impact.

The 600-acre farm, which sits on land owned by Malik’s father-in-law, is now a testing ground for Malik’s “biology- and ecology-first approach toward farming.” Thousands of trees and shrubs act as hedgerows, which naturally protect the farm (crops include mango, citrus, sunflowers, sugar cane, wheat and garbanzo beans) from flooding and windstorms. The farm practices the regenerative method of intercropping, in which two crops are planted together to diversify their natural protections from insect infestations. Fungi is critical to the project’s success; the farm is the largest compost-producing system in Pakistan, resulting in a fungally dominant compost that aids in carbon sequestration.

“Organic farming done right can give you a yield bomb of 30 percent, on average — in some cases more,” Malik says. His passion has led to consulting work for the World Bank, where he and his colleagues are tracking positive economic impacts of regenerative agriculture around the world to show how the method is a win-win for both farmers and the environment.

— Anne-Ryan Sirju JRN’09