Our sole/soul mission is to build farming systems that inspire, and save our soils, climate, planetary and human health.
Who we are and what we do
As we have developed Drawdown Farm our goal has been to continuously improve our practices, techniques and soils. It is our ambition to learn and then deploy all locally adaptable regenerative innovations, that help us enhance ecosystem benefits & nutrition and reduce inputs (especially synthetic + chemical), water usage and fossil fuels.
Our main farm - located in Muzaffargarh - hosts the largest compost making system in Pakistan. We use compost, vermicompost, biochar and farm-made biostimulants and bioferments. We are transitioning our entire farm to no-till, planting a series of Miyawaki forest belts, incorporating agroforestry and silvopasture where possible, and moving our animals to managed grazing and/or silvopasture systems. We have eliminated plastic mulch and are now using organic biomass or living plants as mulch. We have moved much of our acreage to drip & other water saving irrigation technologies, and are expanding the usage of solar energy on the farm. We are on track to reduce water usage by 60-80% compared to flood irrigation which is the norm in South Asia. We aim to do this with spongy soils - high in organic matter and carbon - along with water conserving irrigation systems where possible.
We detail many of our ‘drawdown’ and ‘regenerative’ practices in this website’s Our Regenerative Practices section for anyone to delve deeper and learn more. We will keep updating these pages as we refine our methods and share our experiences. The ultimate goal of Drawdown Farm is to become a beacon of inspiration to farmers across the world.
Why a farm called Drawdown?
Through a stroke of profound good fortune (and Amazon’s algo), our Founder & “Chief Drawdown Officer” Taimur Malik discovered Project Drawdown’s book as soon it got published. When Taimur saw that it had been edited by the legendary Paul Hawken (in his regenerative journey, Taimur had already read some of Paul’s earlier books), he was sold.
Reading the book changed Taimur, giving him a sense of hope and a plan of action on what needs to be done. Taimur was already enmeshed in studying organic agriculture & the circular economy, and a confluence of some seminal texts and case studies (including the Rodale Institute’s first white paper on the soil’s potential for carbon sequestration) brought home this mission. Drawdown strongly reinforced the role of land management in saving us from climate catastrophe.
Bill McKibben’s book Eaarth, showed the world how the planet he was born on had transmogrified due to its broken carbon cycle. That’s why he co-founded 350.org - because the world needs to go back to 350ppm of atmospheric carbon. At 416ppm (beginning well below that) we are already facing unimaginable climate catastrophes across the planet. Our current rates of spewing carbon mean that we are headed for 550-650ppm. This is doomsday stuff. Drawdown is the only solution. We love the name so much, we wanted our goals to be clearly spelled out in our identity.
Chief Drawdown+Doughnut Officer | Chief Economic Ornithologist
Say what? In a state of climate/ecological anxiety (that’s putting it super mildly) new father Taimur Malik helped family members with agricultural lands regenerate this farm. Working with “dead soils” this autodidactic journey has been bumpy to say the least. But even during the toughest times, names and titles can inspire us to keep chugging on.
Most people are still completely oblivious to the need for drawdown and for staying within, what economist Kate Raworth has, in her book Doughnut Economics, so cleverly described as the planetary boundaries of a “doughnut”. CDO+CEO: These titles are excellent conversation starters, because people are inevitably curious (most of the time). The play on CEO is an homage to the earliest conceptualization of natural capital in the modern world. And while the earlier economic ornithology movement had its limits (as does natural capital today), it is imperative to both put economic values on the natural capital that powers our economies and health, and also to recognize that these values are profound underestimations.
Taimur Malik is a systems thinker, regentrepreneur, writer and tireless advocate for resolving the core interlinked problems afflicting the world. He has been a policy advisor to government officials and a strategy advisor to businesses and startups in the regenerative space. In his rare spare time he enjoys everything from teaching children (& grownups - albeit with less fun) about biomimicry and the circular economy, to designing climate victory gardens and Miyawaki forests for friends and strangers alike.
In gratitude to our inspirations, mentors and teachers.
Paul Hawken & Project Drawdown, Bill McKibben, Judith Schwartz, Doug Tompkins & Laguna Blanca, Akira Miyawaki, Yvon Chouinard, The Rodale Institute, Ibrahim Abouleish, H.R.H. Prince Charles, Leontino Balbo Jr., Yacouba Sawadego, Ernst Gotsch, Dame Ellen McArthur, White Oak Pastures, Aldo Leopold, John Kempf, Nathan Harmon, Jenine Benyus, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Dr. Elaine Ingham, David Johnson, Walter Jehne, Takao Furuno, Gunter Pauli, Wendell Berry, Norman Uphoff, The SRI International Network and Resources Center, , Kate Raworth, John Fullerton, Rachel Carson, Professor Hans Joosten aka “the Peat Pope”, Trees for the Future, Charles Massey, Michael Phillips, Ian & Diane Haggerty, Anne Bilke, Sir Albert Howard, Alan Savory, Union of Concerned Scientists, Neal Spackman, Ecosia, E.O. Wilson, Organic Seed Alliance, Stephano Boeri, Seed Matters, Sandra Postel, Dan Kittredge, Paul Taylor, Eric Toensmeier, Ethan Roland, Pesticide Action Network, Dr. Jill Clapperton, David Montgommery, John W. Roulac, Food Tank, Nicole Masters, Dr. Kris Nichols, Institute for Organic Farming at Kiel University, Charlie Arnott, Max Lugavere, The Cornucopia Institute, Jonathan Lundgren, Max Plotkin, Dr. Christine Jones, Singing Frog Farms, Dan Barber, Sitio Simente, Casandra Quave, Bob Quinn, Fazenda de Toca, Nigel Palmer, Professor Nico Prank, Donald Davis, Guy Crosby, Global Landscapes Forum, Suzanne Simard, Peter Wohlleben, Daniel Christian Wahl, Dieter Helm, Deakin University’s Food & Mood Center, Fred Provenza, Carey Gillam, Pavan Sukhdev, Professor Carlo Leifer, Çağan Hakkı Şekercioğlu, Alyson Mitchell and innumerable others.