REPORTEDLY, Saudi Arabia is planning to lease a huge chunk of territory divided among the four provinces and twice the size of Hong Kong inside Pakistan for farming, aimed at ensuring its food security. This will have serious repercussions. For instance, the provinces are most likely to resent it. Just last April, a similar deal had to be scrapped because of opposition from Balochistan. However, if the deal goes ahead, a number of landless tenants particularly in Balochistan and Sindh, will feel that they have been left in the cold. Besides, at the end of the day one might not know how the land would be used and whether it will be strictly used for the declared purpose, because in the past there have been incidents in which large landholdings that were leased had been misused. It would be in the fitness of things for the government to drop the move and instead turn its attention to alleviating the problems faced by the domestic farming community.