LAHORE, April 22: Farmers in the Punjab are fearing a cotton crisis, as the Indus River System Authority's calculations about the late Kharif water availability seem to go wrong.

By the middle of March, Irsa was estimating only four per cent water shortage during the late Kharif season. It later revised the figure to eight per cent by March 30 and, subsequently, to 13 per cent at its meeting on April 13.

Now within a week, the actual shortage has gone up to 35 to 40 per cent, leaving the country's agricultural health and farmers on the verge of disaster. The Punjab irrigation department has shut down all the non-perennial canals and restricted supply to the perennial ones. It is now hoping for increase in temperatures and melting of snow.

"Unless temperature increases to ensure melting of snow in low hills by the end of the month, the country is set for a disaster as far as the cotton situation is concerned," a Punjab Irrigation Department official said here on Thursday.

He said the farmers would have to start preparing land for cotton sowing by May 1 and sow it within 15 days, otherwise, the final yield would be sacrificed. Similarly, he said, Irsa would have to start releasing water by May 1 so that water reached the southern part of the Punjab in the second week of the month, warning that any delay would make the crop vulnerable to severe pest attack.

The farmers feared that they might not be able to sow the crop at all if the water situation didn't improve drastically in the next few days. They said the department was currently concentrating on perennial canals that fed brackish areas, but non-brackish areas and new districts where the Punjab government had tried to extend sowing were left high and dry.

"Although the exact situation will become clear only in the next few days, early clues are disturbing," according to head of the Farmers Associates of Pakistan. The farmers would prefer sowing cotton this year because they got a good price last year, he added.

He said the farmers couldn't sow the crop even with tubewells because the price of diesel had been enhanced to Rs23 per litre from Rs12 per litre in 2001. Thus the cost of the total water supply would be too high for them.

The farmers were also fearing reduction in the cost of lint in the international market. It was 72 cents only two weeks ago, but now it was around 58 cents. The situation had become difficult for the farmers and they could only pray for increase in temperatures.

Commenting on the situation, the department officials said the situation was alarming, but it might improve in the next few days. They added that there was little chance of any substantial increase in acreage, which the department was hoping for before the water crisis.

A farmer from the southern Punjab claimed that rain in the last two days in some areas had brought little relief and the farmers could do nothing but to pray for favourable circumstances.