ONE of the major handicaps of Pakistan’s agriculture is inefficiency, wrong or over application of water that results, on one hand, in the wastage of a precious resource and on the other, undermines productivity because of misplaced faith in higher intensive irrigation to boost produce.

Judicious use of water is thus the key to productivity and conservation of this vital resource that is turning increasingly scarce.

The government has a number of schemes going for conserving water and enhancing its efficient use but their impact would not be known in the near future. In any case, they have no bearing on farming practices and are aimed at reducing the present level of inefficiency of water use. The problem can be resolved relatively early, if attention is paid on the application of water at the farm level to different crops.

Established statistics inform that water efficiency ranges from 27 per cent to 40 per cent in Pakistan. This is a serious case of squandering scarce water. While seepages are responsible for this situation, old fashioned ways of irrigating crops are no less, indeed more to be blamed for the loss of water. Farmers tend to over irrigate crops in the belief that greater the quantity of water applied to crops, higher would be yields from fields. It does not work like that.

Basmati rice is a case in point. The crop is regarded as consuming a high quantity of water. That is correct but in comparison with most other crops and not in itself and certainly not to the extent that is seen in the fields. Experts feel that the same amount of rice can be produced with about fifty per cent of water input than what is applied at present. Lesser water may possibly lead to improve in total yield, they contend.

About 12, 000 cubic meter of water is used for producing approximately one ton of basmati rice, a traditional quantity of water applied to this crop in our region. But experts place water needs of the crop at exactly fifty per cent of this quantity. That comes down to 6,000 cubic meter water.

In the over all scheme of rice production, the quantity reaches astronomical proportions and ads up to a colossal quantity. Pakistan produces 2.8 million tons of rice per year. The over-applied water thus becomea a massive waste sufficient to irrigate another crop requiring similar water input. If land and other conditions were available, the water now used for Basmati rice can produce double of the present crop.

Sugar cane is another high water crop. However, water application is excessive in this case too. Moreover, whatever the extra quantity of water used for irrigating cane, it can be utilized more effectively by inter-cropping. Canola crop is ideal for cultivation in cane fields and harvests about the same time as cane ripens. Which means that the amount of water applied to cane can irrigate two crops. Needless to emphasize, benefits of inter-cropping are immense for the agriculture sector, the national economy and the farmers.

Cane growers are one of the most exploited and under paid members of the farming community. They can raise their income quite a few notches by sowing canola between cane rows. But expertise for such cropping is not the farmer’s forte and it is here that extension wings of provincial agriculture departments are required to guide and help farmers.

Three provinces, Punjab, Sindh and NWFP have considerable areas under sugar cane and if canola is cultivated in cane fields, Pakistan would be doubly a beneficiary as this would help cut down edible oil imports.

Canola can also be sown in cotton fields with productive results. Indeed its inter- cropping with cane and cotton can provide Pakistan the breakthrough the country needs in edible oils and significantly scuttle the import bill in addition to making water use more efficient and productive. But cotton growers are apparently happy with returns from their crop and provincial agriculture departments do not make any effort to covert them to dual cropping.

Provinces can make a great contribution to the national economy and to the poor farmer’s incomes by encouraging farmers to practice inter cropping. This is also the way to alleviating poverty which is high in the rural sector and rampant among small cane growers. This would serve a number of productive and financially rewarding ends.

However, as far as efficient use of water is concerned, cotton growers seem already aware and practicing conservation to quite an extent; big land owners have certainly adopted bed and furrow planting and they have had excellent results. But this is not enough.

Last year’s bumper crop of cotton owed its prosperity to the changed cultivation technique too, among other factors. Bed sowing undeniably reduced the need for irrigation to some extent and ensured that the crop was properly irrigated without worry about availability of water. Efforts in this direction should be augmented by provincial extension services.

Wheat growers have been slow in converting themselves to bed cultivation; they have in fact not given it much thought and only a few thousand acres of wheat crop were sown on beds last year. They can conserve water by shifting to bed cultivation. More importantly, they can benefit by using less water for the crop.

Most farmers generally apply four to five waters to the crop while three are considered sufficient. Intensive irrigation does not add to the yield and in fact lowers productivity on a long term basis because fertility of soil is eroded in the process.

Farms with diminishing produce suffer because of the mistaken belief of farmers that higher quantity of water would help them grow more but there is no evidence to substantiate this thinking.

But water is not the only inefficiently applied and used resource; fertilizer falls in the same category. Excessive application of chemical fertilizers undermines the water holding capacity of the soil and has a negative impact on land’s productivity in the end. This is another area where extension services have to play a role.

They can do two things to begin with: persuade farmers to use less water and reduce application of chemical fertilizers but the farming community is unfortunately guided in to using more and more fertilizer as a prescription for higher produce. That is movement in the wrong direction.

The government’s focus on increasing productivity of crops to make Pakistan self-sufficient in food needs is praiseworthy but its methods need to be revised and updated. Productivity is intricately linked with efficient use of resources, water in particular and that is not happening at this point in time. More regrettably, one does not see any movement in that direction either.