Usman Zaheer Ahmad, Chairman, Pakistan Dairy Association (PDA) & CEO Fauji Foods

Usman Zaheer Ahmed chairs Pakistan’s dairy industry association at a time when the livestock sector which supports tens of millions of rural livelihoods and makes Pakistan one of the world’s largest milk producers is absorbing climate pressure from multiple directions at once. Heat stress on cattle reduces yields and increases mortality. Flooding destroys the fodder crops that keep animals alive through the off-season. Shifting rainfall patterns make planning a season ahead increasingly unreliable for smallholder dairy farmers, who have neither the savings nor the insurance to absorb repeated losses. The dairy sector’s exposure to climate risk rarely gets the same attention as crop losses, but the scale of vulnerability is comparable. Ahmed brings the industry’s perspective into a conversation about how food systems can be made more resilient, and what the private sector can and must do to support the farmers at the bottom of the supply chain whose ability to keep producing depends on conditions they cannot control.