Water for agriculture

Amid water shortages this summer, social media is awash with water-conservation messages for households. Indeed, using a bucket to do the laundry or wash a car can save dozens of liters flowing down the tap. A drop saved is indeed a drop that can be used later on. With the water they get, households, especially in the upper parts of the country, could always be more economical with the use.

But in the macro picture, water management at the household level alone is not going to ease the country’s water stress. Over 90 percent of available water resources are estimated to make their way to the agriculture sector every year – the global average is 70 percent. How much savings can tens of millions of households realistically achieve, with a water share of a mere five percent, replete with distribution inequality?

Much more savings can be had by doing away with flood irrigation and by introducing efficient irrigation techniques in the farming sector. Sadly, not much has been done on this front by the federal and provincial governments. Modern, water-efficient irrigation techniques like drip irrigation, impact sprinklers and direct seeding, besides wastewater treatment, have been around for many decades. But policymakers still talk them up as if they’re too novel to be implemented in the short term.

Despite having state-of-the-art irrigation systems, the state of water productivity in Pakistan is abysmal – or perhaps it is so because of this irrigation system. Water productivity in Pakistan’s agriculture sector is among the lowest in the region. As per a Wapda estimate, Pakistan’s water productivity stands at 0.13 kilograms per cubic meter of water, as opposed to 0.39 kg/m3 for India.

Pakistan’s agriculture sector must do more with less, so that valuable fresh water resources can be routed towards basic housing use as well as value-added commercial uses of water. It is important to secure the country’s bread basket. But the growth in cultivation area for water-heavy, high-delta crops such as sugarcane and rice at the expense of other productive economic sectors needs to be discouraged. (A kg of rice is said to consume about 4,000 liters of water!)

Water-efficiency in agriculture is paramount: majority of Pakistani industries are agro-based, just as some services (trade and transportation) also depend on commodities. The supply-side, despite building mega water reservoirs, will likely remain constrained due to climate change. The double-whammy of higher food demand (population growth) and higher water needs (hotter climate) requires the agriculture sector to be water efficient. The next Punjab and Sindh governments must make this issue a priority.