June 9, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 8, 1424

Of the nearly 550,000 tubewells installed in Punjab, over 55 per cent are delivering water that is considered unfit for irrigating crops. Its saline and sodic contents are undermining sustainability of agriculture and damaging the quality of land.

Pakistan has around 600,000 tubewells across the country but the majority, 543,243 is installed in the Punjab province. The government owns about 5,300 tubewells while the rest belong to private owners. They are extensively used to harness underground resources because of increasing shortage of water.

A recent survey of 41,000 tubewells revealed that water from 55 per cent of the installations is unfit for irrigation and human consumption. However, growers in areas where water scarcity is acute are forced to turn to tubewells for irrigating crops.

Farmers manage to nourish crops by mixing groundwater with surface resources but heavy dependence on groundwater has led to dangerously low water level in many parts of the province. On the other hand, dry-to-drought conditions during the last three years have left farmers with no option except intensively drawing water through tubewells but that is solving one problem by causing a host of others, many of them serious and involving grim consequences.

The survey revealed problems of quality with 55 per cent tubewells but many experts are of the view that the ground conditions are harsher than that. The percentage could be around 70 or above, they say, adding that this is leading to widespread secondary sodicity and exposing land to black alkali or, as the effects of saline sodic water on land are called, kala kallar.

The pores in the land are blocked by kala kallar with the result that water cannot seep under the soil and hampers recharging of the aquifer. In the long run, fertile fields turn into wasteland as the quality of land is degraded and its productivity is undermined, often to the extent of getting totally nullified.

Farmers are generally conscious of consequences and adopt conjunctive measures, that is, they mix ground water with surface irrigation resources. But they are unaware of precise requirements and implications of conjunctive use of water resources and their care and concern fails to protect the land from the after-effects of sub-surface water containing contents detrimental to the well-being of land.

The safeguards essential for a water mix are not precisely known to growers. The questions of how and when the mix is to be applied and how much should be the quantity of ground and canal water neither confront them nor are answers available to them. The issue requires concentrated attention from the agriculture scientists and needs to be treated on an empirical basis. Leaving it to the inherited and practical wisdom of a majority of the members of the farming sector, despite the fact that it has stood the sector in good stead for centuries, is not enough.

A few things need to be done at the earliest. First is the count of tubewells in Punjab because the problem is almost entirely in this province. Other provinces either do not rely on underground water or their dependence is nominal whereas it is massive in Punjab.

The existing inventory should be reliable but it is a question if it should be accepted as one hundred per cent authentic. It is certainly not based on a field-to-field count. Union councils can be asked to verify the exact number of tubewells in their areas for the provincial government to prepare accurate date on tubewells in the province.

Information on the contents of groundwater and their effect on land and productivity is a similar subject.

Conclusions are of a generalized nature but the impact of sub surface water on land and crops differs from area to area, indeed field to field. That should be measured in a scientific manner.

A survey conducted by the Mona Research Station of Wapda some years back had revealed that while inputs in different fields were the same, productivity of each field differed due localized conditions. This, it was found, was due to the contents of groundwater that were not the same in every area. The conjunctive mix was required to be field specific for obtaining maximum productivity. This aspect of the use of groundwater does not seem to fall under the purview of any particular department. The responsibility is at least not assigned to any department. There is no dearth of theoretical studies but specific attention is not paid towards guiding farmers about the correct mix or about testing the samples of soils to obtain correct information and brief farmers accordingly.

Dr M. Shafiq, a water sector expert, who has worked both within Pakistan and abroad in this field feels that unless this issue is given due attention and tackled on priority basis, vast fields in Punjab would be rendered infertile by excessive use of groundwater that is unsuitable for agriculture. Samples of soil and water should be regularly obtained and tested, he says. This, he adds, is of utmost importance to ensure sustainability of agriculture.

Another danger in pumping underground water is that the process lowers water level. Farmers keep on harnessing groundwater to sustain crops but what they get is more of brackish water as they deeper in the aquifer. On the one hand, this does not benefit drops and on the other, water level gapes further down. In the process, their expenses for obtaining underground resources are increased.

Dr Shafiq feels that provincial government has sufficient resources to undertake regular testing of soil and underground water. Farmers should be guided in the light of results obtained. Further, the cropping pattern would also need to be reviewed and in areas where surface irrigation resources are scarce and underground water is low quality, farmers should be advised to go for crops suitable for prevailing conditions. This is a challenge, he says, that must be met without loss of time because land would rapidly degrade otherwise.