Improving Balochistan's agriculture
By Dr. Sardar Riaz A. Khan

Balochistan is the largest province with a land mass of 34.7 million hectares comprising 44 per cent of the country's 79.6 million hectares geographic area. Although the largest province, its population is 5 per cent of the total population and nearly 80 per cent of which lives in rural areas.

The density is 19 per sq km as compared to 383 of Punjab, 213 of Sindh, 236 of NWFP and 164 of Pakistan. Balochistan has a diversified landscape comprising snow-covered mountains, dry highlands, deserts, small alluvial plain inlets and arid coastal areas.

The altitude varies from sea level to 4000 m. With the exception of coastal belt and small areas of Nasirabad and Sibi divisions bordering Sindh, most of the area is classified as highlands.

The province has a very diverse climate ranging from hyper arid and arid, hot sub-tropical through arid warm, semi-arid cool. Most of the province falls in winter rain region and the main annual rainfall varies from 50 mm to 400 mm. The rainfall is erratic.

The diversity in climate enables the province not only to grow a large number of crops, vegetables, deciduous and tropical fruits but also to keep a large number of livestock, especially small ruminants.

Thus agriculture is the major economic activity in the province and contributes over 50 per cent of the provincial domestic product (PDP) of which the major crops contributes over 26, minor crops 8, livestock 15, forestry 0.3 and fishery 1.5 per cent. About 67 per cent of the total labour force is engaged in agriculture.

Out of the total area of 34.7 million hectares, hardly 2.06 million (5.9 per cent) is cultivated and 54 per cent remains current fallow due to lack of water. Besides, there are 4.85 million hectares of cultural wasteland which can be brought under cultivation subject to the availability of water.

Although the total cropped area of Balochistan is 3.8 per cent of the total cropped area of the country (22.76 mha), and yet the province is the largest contributor to the national production of apples (82 per cent), peaches (69 per cent), grapes (97.6 per cent), pomegranates (82 per cent), dates (64 per cent), almonds (93.5 per cent) and plums (49 per cent). However, over-irrigation has resulted in severe over-mining of ground water.

Again, in spite of limitation of irrigation water, yields per hectare of several crops are highest in the country such as those of barley, sorghum, millet, pulses, sessamum, onions, potatoes, chilies and fodders, while those of rice, sugar-cane, tobacco, gram, mash and castor bean are the second highest in the country.

These yields are still 50-70 per cent below their achievable potential. FAO experts in Pakistan suggest that there is still great potential of increasing provincial crop yields by following modern crop production technology.

Over 42 per cent of the total cropped area is under high water requirement crops causing heavy strain on limited water resource base of the province. Again, of the total irrigated area of 824,663 hectares of the province, 481,775 hectares (58.5 per cent) is irrigated by canals, 28.5 by tube-wells, 2.9 by wells and 10.1 per cent by karezes, springs etc.

Of the canal irrigated area, about 84 per cent is in Nasirabad Division alone which is nearly 5 per cent of the province, while 6.8 per cent is in Mekran Division, 4.7 per cent is in Kalat Division, 3.9 per cent in Sibi Division and negligible in Quetta and Zhob Divisions. Thus tube-wells are the major source of irrigation outside the canal irrigated areas followed by karezes, springs etc.

The number of tube-wells increased from 4,335 in 1974-75 to 21,115 in 1999-2000. This indiscriminate expansion-authorized and unauthorized- has led to over-mining of ground-water and its lowering by two meters or more annually.

As a result, there is now no ground water potential in Quetta, Pishin, Mustong, Mangochar and Pishin Lora due to their over-mining. Porali River basin has good potential, while Zhob, Qilla Saifullah, Nari River, Humun-e-Lora and Kachhi Plain have a limited potential.

Some of these basins covering nearly 30 per cent of the province have already been overdrawn and face drought-like conditions. At places, orchards have already been dried up and there is not even drinking water and villagers have to shift to other places.

In order to overcome this problem following measures may be taken. Instead of over-irrigating orchards with conventional gravity flow (flood irrigation), drip irrigation system should be adopted.

It keeps evaporation losses low at an efficiency rate of 95 per cent and cuts water use by 40-60 per cent besides increasing yield upto 20 per cent. Again, sprinkler irrigation should be applied to vegetables and other crops except rice.

It not only saves water considerably but more land becomes available for cropping as field channels, furrows or corrugations, ridges or borders etc are not required. It can also be applied on undulating soils thus reducing cost of land levelling.

Low energy precision application (LEPA) offers considerable improvement over conventional sprinkler irrigation. When applied with appropriate water saving techniques it achieves efficiencies as high as 95 per cent besides saving energy cost by 20-50 per cent and increasing yield by 20 per cent.

In case of tube-wells with brackish water the well established gypsum, sulfurous acid generator and tistech rio technologies be tested at fields. Whichever is more practicable should be adopted. About 7.5 maf of run-off of rain, hill torrents and stream water, variable on the yearly basis, should not be allowed to leave the borders of the province.

It should be used to recharge the valley floors and plains by means of check dams, reservoirs, stilling ponds etc. Previous efforts did not succeed as they were not built on engineering principles.

The efficiency of artificial recharge structures be improved by better structures such as dams that allow recharge downstream or weir off-take spreading facilities that would provide long-term artificial recharge. Besides efforts should be made by upcatchment management strategies.

Again, in the canal irrigated areas nearly 40 per cent of water is lost due to poorly maintained delivery system and only 60 per cent of which reaches fields where defective irrigation further accentuate the losses by 20-25 per cent. This is a colossal waste of province's precious limited water resource base.

About 50 per cent of the total cultivated area of the province is under dry-land crops with very low yields. The major dry-land farming systems practised in the province are flood water (sailaba) farming, 'Bundat' farming, ephemeral stream and Khushba farming.

There is a huge source of saline sea water of Arabian Sea along the province's coast, but it cannot be used for drinking or agricultural purposes unless desalinized. The planners should develop the strategy to test the latest desalination techniques to meet the impending challenges of future water scarcity. The desalinization of sea water is already being followed in over 120 centres of the world.

Again, there are highly salt tolerant trees, bushes, shrubs and grasses which can grow well with double the strength of sea water. Cattle. sheep, goats and donkeys feed well on them.

These should be grown along the coastal belt. Likewise, there are natural land races of millet, cow peas and forage legumes that grow under dryland conditions near Hodeidah on the lowland Tihamah coastal belt of Red Sea in Yemen Arab Republic.

The underground water flowing from the Red Sea to its coastal belt is far more brackish than the water of Arabian Sea inflowing to the coastal belt of the province.

Hence they have greater potential of growing along the coastal belt of Balochistan and providing extra food for the people and feed to the livestock .The concerned department of agriculture should develop research project to exploit this potential.

The department should also encourage to sow wheat with zero tillage drill after rice. It will save water by 20 per cent and increase yield of wheat by 15-20 per cent.