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BAKRANI: Since his father died in 2011, Moeez Assadullah has been looking after his family’s farm alone.
The 21-year-old tends the three hectres (seven acres) of land without the help of his two brothers, who lost interest in farming when they realised that more erratic weather was making agriculture an unreliable source of income.
They now work at a brick kiln in the nearby town of Larkana. But Assadullah has taken a risk, and come up with his own plan to adapt to shifting weather patterns.
Three years ago, he stopped growing rice on the farm in Bakrani. The crop was too labour intensive, and took too long to get to harvest, he explained.
“In view of the rapidly changing weather and upheaval in it, growing a six-month rice crop that requires huge irrigation and care was not a viable option compared to growing vegetables,” he said.
Many of Pakistan’s farmers are trying to adapt to changing climate conditions — a process that can prove difficult for those with little in the way of education or savings to help them make the required switches.
Richer farmers, with more land, money and education, meanwhile, are finding the switch easier. That reality suggests Pakistan may face a future where an uncertain climate forces the poor who cultivate over 80 per cent of the country’s agricultural land out of farming unless they get help, experts say.
Failing small farms could undermine government efforts to achieve sustainable agriculture and food security, and to eradicate poverty, hunger and malnutrition, experts warn.
“Providing the poor farmers with required technical, financial and institutional support ... is key,” said Khuda Bakhsh, an agriculture scientist at the COMSATS Institute of Information Technology in Vehari, Punjab.
Drip irrigation
Assadullah is now growing traditional varieties of cauliflower, spinach, green chilli, cabbage, tomatoes and onion. He said that in his village many farmers with larger plots of land were adopting water conservation technologies, such as drip irrigation.
He would like to join them, but the installation costs up to $700 per hectare were too high, he added.
But 80km east, in Khairpur, Nawaz Somroo is using lasers to grow more cotton on his father’s more than 80 hectares of land.
Unlike the self-trained Assadullah, Somroo, 38, is a graduate from the Faisalabad Agriculture University, one of the Pakistan’s top agricultural schools.
With his education and access to more money, Somroo has been able to adopt improved cotton varieties with higher yields. He uses the latest laser technology to make his fields level, which helps him reduce water consumption by nearly 60pc.
According to Somroo, till 2012 his father cultivated a traditional cotton variety. But at the university, he had learned about a seed variety bio-engineered to be pest resistant and introduced it on the family farm. Yields jumped by about a third.
Now, he says, other farmers consult him about ways to achieve similar improvements.
Akhter Ali, an agro-ecologist and food security expert at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centres office in Islamabad, said Pakistani farmers who want to adopt climate-smart agriculture are hindered by a lack of technical know-how and financial resources.
Provincial agriculture departments have launched a few programmes to boost farmers’ ability to cope with climate change.
Starting this year, a three-year World Bank-funded effort is underway to help 16,000 small-scale farmers in Sindh to adapt their livestock and vegetable farming, said Sindh’s agriculture minister Sohail Anwar Siyal.
The $88 million scheme aims to improve the productivity and market access of small- and medium-scale farmers by improving their knowledge and access to technology.
Last year, Punjab’s chief minister also launched programmes to help farmers with everything from new financial support to a distribution of more than five million smartphones.
Focusing on young smallholder poor farmers and imparting to them new knowledge about coping with climate change impacts as well as helping with subsidised technology and small loans — is critical for achieving household food security and poverty alleviation, said Pakistan’s minister for national food security Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan.
Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2017
