WHILE the unseasonal and excessive downpour in the preceding two months has raised the availability of water to the highest level in over a decade, it has devastated crops and hurt the small farmers.

The country has stored 8.91m acre feet (MAF) of water, with Tarbela Dam accumulating 3.48MAF, Mangla lake 5.17MAF and Chashma 0.26MAF.

While this is a moment for rejoicing, it does not offer a permanent solution. The existing storage facility is still short of the national need. The global average storage is 40pc, whereas Pakistan is storing only 10pc of its annual water flows.

Building a storage, particularly on the Indus, is urgently required to increase the storage capacity from 10pc to at least 20pc in the next 10-15 years.

An immediate outcome of the unscheduled rains and their storage, thanks to the raising of the Mangla Dam, has been a reduction in the demand water from provinces for irrigation. But a sizable quantity of crops and small farmers’ livelihood has been destroyed.

Federal food security minister Sikandar Hayat Bosan’s estimate of damage to the wheat crop is over 3m tonnes. The federal committee on agriculture had fixed the national wheat production target at 26.3m tonnes for the 2014-15 rabi season, but ministry officials do not expect it to be achieved.

According to a Reuters report, the mushrooming of cattle pens around towns and cities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab “reflects a growing resignation among farmers that they can no longer make a living from agriculture”.

In other words, the only way out for small farmers under the prevailing conditions is to swap their crops for cattle until the government wakes up to the gravity of the situation and puts things in order.

Tired of paying off debts and coping with the worsening effects of climate change almost every year, small farmers have been abandoning crop-farming in recent years and have been looking for other reliable sources of income to feed their families

As the rain continues intermittently, many farmers are still waiting to harvest their crops, even though they are three weeks behind schedule. According to agriculture experts, such delays hurt harvests and can increase the chances of attack by yellow rust, a fungal disease that hampers photosynthesis and stunts the growth of grain.

Tired of paying off debts and coping with the worsening effects of climate change almost every year, small farmers have been abandoning crop-farming in recent years and have been looking for other reliable sources of income to feed their families. Some of them, having failed to find any work, even started working as labourers at brick kilns.

Even when there are bumper crops, as has been the case last year and this year too, the monetary benefits do not trickle down to the average growers. Instead, their losses keep on multiplying due to the crashing of commodity prices in local and international markets.

The small farmers in Punjab’s cotton and rice belts lack the resources to buy inputs for raising the next crop. They are also often denied the government-fixed price for their produce by the middlemen, and the payments are made late.

Generally, agriculture inputs are available at subsidised rates in many countries, including India. However, only a nominal relief is provided to the farmers in Pakistan through subsidies on canal water and electricity bills.

Meanwhile, inputs like seed, fertiliser, pesticide and diesel continue to remain beyond the reach of small farmers. It is time that the government revives the rural economy by revisiting the cost structure of agricultural inputs. The first thing it needs to do is abolish the GST on inputs.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says in a new report that since the quality of land is declining in Asia, the scope for expansion of arable land in the region is fairly limited. Asian countries, therefore, must invest heavily in agricultural research.

In its regional overview of the just-released ‘Food Insecurity in Asia and the Pacific 2015,’ the FAO suggested that yield increases would need to account for the vast bulk of nearly 90pc growth in production by 2050.

Keeping in view the fact that the best land for irrigation has already been developed, only a small amount of additional land will be equipped with irrigation in East Asia and South Asia. In order to meet increased global food demand in 2050, the monetary value of agricultural production must increase by 60pc (77pc for developing countries) from the 2005-07 levels.

In the view of consumers’ preference for diversifying their diets to non-cereals and from rice to wheat within cereals, the production of rice is projected to grow by only 22pc by 2050, less than the growth in wheat (37pc) and maize (60pc).

The report says Asia is likely to enhance its role as a rice exporter to other regions in the future, with Pakistan, India, Thailand and Vietnam playing a lead role.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, June 8th, 2015

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