IRIN Focus on drought-affected farmers

Despite monsoon rains elsewhere in the country, the three-year drought which destroyed farming livelihoods in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan shows little sign of abating. Much damage has already been done to the region’s crops, livestock and orchards, with farmers forced to work as labourers for far less than they used to earn. A recent WFP/FAO joint report indicates that 350,000 people are in need of food aid this year. Meanwhile, farmers struggle to feed their families, and their long-term future in this water-scarce region is far from secure. Standing in his apple orchard which would normally be full of fruit in the Loralai district of the city of Quetta, one of the worst-affected areas, Salim Khan told IRIN he had gone from riches to rags, and had nothing left of his 24-hectare orchard. The fruit trees used to bring in the grand sum of US $2,000 per season, and sometimes more. However, Khan was now forced to work as a labourer in the nearby bazaar, earning US $500 a year. “I’m now getting paid between US $25 and $35 per month. It is an insult,” he said. The effects of the drought are visible in the province, with hundreds of hectares of trees that once bore fruit now having been chopped down. Khan explained that his family’s food intake had been seriously reduced. Whereas previously they had been able to afford to eat meat regularly, now they were lucky to have vegetables as part of their main meal. “We simply can’t afford it,” he said. The orchard, a family business for the past 20 years, was now in the worst state ever. Khan’s land had once been worth about US $40,000, but he said he was now desperate enough to accept even US $4,000 for it. “I can’t sell my land - no one will buy it. It is worthless now.” He said he and other farmers in the area had approached the government, and that although officials had visited the land and taken details, no help had so far been forthcoming. Khan’s wife, Shelagh, said they used to live a luxurious life, but now it was just a misery. “We have to buy drinking water. Our income has dropped. Before the fruit was free, and now it breaks my heart to buy it from the bazaar,” she said. Khan noted that he had also had to lay off six Afghan refugees who had been working on his farm. An hour’s drive west from Loralai, 35 hectares of apple trees belonging to Dadullah were also destroyed by the drought. He said he had been earning up to US $5,000 a year before the drought set in, but last year his takings had dropped to US $300. Dadullah is now working as a road-repair labourer for a dollar a day. He said he used to have 20 Afghans working on his land, but, like Khan, he was forced to lay them off. “The amount of food we eat has decreased. We can’t afford to send our children to school any more,” he said. He explained that his whole life had changed because of the drought. Dadullah said there was a supply of underground water about 50 metres from his land, but he did not have the US $2,000 needed to dig a well to gain access to it. He had also been visited by government officials, but still awaited results. “If we don’t get water soon my livelihood is over,” he said. The World Bank recently disbursed US $130 million in a reallocation of funds from ongoing projects to help the authorities cope. “This was only temporary relief aimed as an additional support to encourage more planning,” a community development specialist with the World Bank, Qazi Azmat Isa, told IRIN. “What we need is a long-term plan,” he added. Meanwhile, a medium-term plan involving the establishment of a geographic information service to help identify which areas could be used for agriculture and which should be left alone would be very helpful, Isa said. The Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) is overseeing a pilot programme in the Loralai valley with the aim of providing a tangible example of what could be done to improve farming and water management. “They’ve already started meeting with communities to discuss locations of water storages. One of the aims will be to train farmers in how to use less water on their fields and still obtain a good crop,” said Isa. Since starting its drought-alleviation projects, the PPAF has allocated US $4 million towards improving infrastructure, micro-credit systems and capacity building. However, it will take time for attitudes in the region to change. “So much happens based on word of mouth. One farmer plants orchards and is successful, so others do the same,” Isa said. But the result is over-extended fruit farming in a water-scarce region. With much of Baluchistan semiarid, Isa maintained that a long-term plan needed to be developed for orchard farming. “Horticulture in certain pockets of Baluchistan should be the strategy. Fruit and vegetables can grow there, but in select areas,” he said. Meanwhile, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced that it would be helping Pakistan fight the drought by giving assistance of US $100, million, to be spent on improved water management and conservation, and a variety of small-scale rural and social development initiatives. “As we don’t really know how long the drought will last, the urgent need is to provide income opportunities for the most affected communities,” the manager of the ADB’s Agricultural and Rural Development Division, Fred Roche, said. “At the same time, there is a need to set the stage for the post-drought recovery in the affected region,” he added. The assistance is to be given over the next three years. Head of WFP, Pakistan, Jeff Taft-Dick, told IRIN that with the recent monsoon rains, people had forgotten that the drought was still affecting parts of Pakistan, with long-term implications for farmers in the region. He said UN teams would still be monitoring the situation in the worst-affected areas, as food resources and livestock had been virtually wiped out in some places. Taft-Dick added there was also a lack of job opportunities, and more competition in the manual labour market, making it even more difficult for farmers to cope. The next rains in Baluchistan are forecast for the winter, and are expected in three or four months from now. However, Taft-Dick stressed that they would only have an impact in April next year, if at all. He warned that better use of water resources needed to be made in order to avert a similar disaster in the future. According to the joint WFP/FAO report, crops have been drastically reduced, with rain-fed wheat production down 70 percent below the average of the previous five years, and total wheat production down 11 percent in 2000, when Baluchistan received only half of its average rainfall. Livestock has been cut by 60 percent compared to levels in 1999. Farmers were either forced to sell their animals or they died from the effects of weather conditions. “The poor end of the community have lost their coping mechanisms,” Taft-Dick said. There is now concern over the farming community’s future in Baluchistan. “The question is how are these people going to cope in the next few years,” Taft-Dick said. He maintained that there had been little media coverage of the drought in the province, which meant that it was soon forgotten. The long-term forecast remains bleak for farmers in Baluchistan. According to a recent IRIN special report on the situation of water in Pakistan, the immediate shortage is severe and will remain so for some time. Meteorological experts, who blame the prolonged drought on the La Nina weather phenomenon, have warned that the country has entered a dry cycle, with conditions set to continue for six years. They also predict that with prevailing consumption rates and a population growth of 4 million a year, one out of three people in Pakistan will face critical water-shortages.