Nepal’s shifting rains and changing crops

By Saleem Shaikh
October 17, 2013
Science and Development News Network International
www.scidev.net

A short video story on how shifting rains are leading to changing crop patterns.

Watch the climate video story on this weblink: http://www.scidev.net/south-asia/climate-change/multimedia/nepal-s-shifting-rains-and-changing-crops-1.html 

A Nepalese mountain farmer, in the scenic panityanki mountain village, packs cauliflower to send them to vegetable market in Kahtmandu, Nepal’s capital. SciDev.net/Saleem Shaikh

[KATHMANDU] With weather becoming more erratic every year as a result of climate change, Nepali farmers are progressively shifting their approach, turning vast areas of rice paddies into small-scale vegetablefarming. Vegetables are more resilient as they can be hand watered in case of drought. Farmers say that with rains that used to come in April now shifting as late as mid-June, vegetables that can be sown at the time the rains finally fall are now a better investment.

But large parts of their fields now remain uncultivated due to lack of water.

The situation raises concern among experts, who warn that a shift from rice to vegetable cultivation may harm food security. They also say that without adequate support from the government farmers’ livelihood could be at risk. According to researchers, there is now a need for insurance schemes, public subsidies and improved early-warning systems to forecast extreme weather.

Website: http://www.scidev.net/south-asia/climate-change/multimedia/nepal-s-shifting-rains-and-changing-crops-1.html 

Kashmiri Farmers Unprepared for Drought

SRINAGAR, India, Aug 16 2013 (IPS) – Zareena Bano has had to skip school 17 times this year to help out on her family’s farm in Tangchekh village in the northern Indian state of Kashmir.

Her teachers say she has the potential to be a brilliant student, but warn that if she keeps missing school she will not go far.

Never before has the 15-year-old had to sacrifice her education in order to support her family, but an acute water crisis in this Himalayan state has made irrigation a constant worry and severely disrupted the way of life for thousands of farming families like her own.

Troubled though they are by the toll the extra labour is taking on their daughter’s schoolwork, Zareena’s parents are in no position to order her to stay away from the fields.

Her father, Gaffar Rathar, says the family is entirely dependent on the yields from his 2.5-acre paddy field and half a dozen walnut trees. Frequent droughts mean a lot of additional hard work for him and his family.

“Sometimes, when water is in extremely short supply, we have to store water in small ponds that we dug ourselves, and plastic containers,” he told IPS.

More at: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/kashmiri-farmers-unprepared-for-drought/

Climate change confuses Kashmir’s farmers

Faced with increasing frequency of droughts, and with irrigation facilities available to less than half the farms, rice farmers in Kashmir are wondering how to deal with water shortage.

More at:  http://www.thethirdpole.net/climate-change-confuses-kashmirs-farmers/

Could Sri Lanka get irrigation boost from ancient reservoirs? – IRIN

One way Sri Lanka can better manage its water resources in the face of changing monsoon patterns is through centuries-old water reservoirs, experts say.

Experts at the Colombo-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) say one way to ease fluctuating rice harvests (due to increasingly erratic monsoon seasons) is to use thousands of ancient small irrigation reservoirs spread out in the Northern, North Central, Eastern, North Western and Southern provinces. – http://www.irinnews.org/report/98503/could-sri-lanka-get-irrigation-boost-from-ancient-reservoirs

Ancient irrigation reservoirs vital amid erratic monsoon rains in Sri Lanka – Thomson Reuters Foundation

Sri Lanka has been increasingly witnessing erratic rain patterns that have had a debilitating  impact on the country’s vital agriculture production. Now research has shown that centuries old irrigation schemes spread wide in the rural areas can be used as a workable solution to the vagaries of these shifting rain patterns. – http://www.trust.org/item/20130702101105-pvwac/?source=hptop

Pakistan farmers grapple with climate change

Gujar Khan, Pakistan – After five consecutive dry winters, Abdul Qadeer was jubilant at

Farmers say they are “at the complete mercy” of the weather [AFP]

the prospect of a plentiful harvest of wheat after December rains soaked his farmland.

But the 39-year-old farmer’s hopes were destroyed last month by torrential spring rains and a hailstorm that flattened his wheat crop.

Qadeer is one of many farmers suffering the effects of unpredictable weather patterns and variable rainfall, which scientists believe are linked to climate change.

Now Pakistan’s government is trying to introduce crop insurance to save farmers from economic ruin. Qadeer, who farms land in Gujar Khan, approximately 55 km southeast of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, vividly recalls the unexpected volley of pebble-sized hailstones that lashed his 15-acre (6-hectare) field for about 15 minutes one day in the last week of March.

“I could clearly hear dull, clunking sounds of the hailstones that slashed through the stalks of the standing wheat crop and knocked (the ears of wheat) to the ground,” Qadeer said.

He had anticipated harvesting a good crop in the second week of April, but the unseasonal storm destroyed his wheat, causing losses of 800,000 Pakistani rupees ($8,000).

Zaman Ali, a farmer in Islamabad’s southern suburb of Chak Shahzad, says 70 percent of the wheat he was growing on 9 acres (3.6 hectares) was destroyed by strong winds and heavy rain.

Ali believes the yield from the remaining wheat will reach only 60 percent of what it should have been, because the rains brought unseasonably low temperatures, preventing the grain from maturing properly. Ali described the weather as unprecedented in his 15 years of experience growing crops.

“Farmers are really defenceless when such unwanted torrential rains and hailstorms strike their crops,” said Muhammad Riaz, who lost crops worth about 1.6 million rupees ($16,000) on his 24-acre (10-hectare) farm in Haripur, 65 km (40 miles) north of Islamabad. “We are really completely at the mercy of the weather.”

Insurance coming soon? 

“The solution to such grim situations that are becoming frequent lies in crop insurance,” said Nazar Muhammad Gondal, Pakistan’s former federal minister for food and agriculture. “Farmers can at least recover some of the financial damages, and are able to cultivate next season crops.”

Crop insurance is not currently available in Pakistan, but Iftikhar Ahmed, chairman of the state-owned Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC), said the government is leading negotiations with insurance firms and banks to introduce a national crop insurance programme, similar to those introduced in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. It is hoped the insurance will be available by mid-November this year.

In Pakistan, wheat is sown in mid-October and harvested in mid-April. Around 16 million acres (6.5 million hectares) are planted with wheat every year, yielding around 25 million tonnes of grain.

“Eight to 10 years ago, the spring season used to come in the first week of March and last for 25 to 30 days. Now, it comes in late March and lasts for only 15 to 20 days,” said farmer Qadeer.

Spring rain is a rare phenomenon in Pakistan, particularly in northern and central areas. The inclement weather lowered the temperature by 20 degrees Celsius to around 9 degrees this year.

“From March to mid-April, the wheat crop needs (temperatures) above 30 degrees Celsius for its healthy growth of stalk and grain, and to avoid pest attacks,” said Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the World Meteorological Organisation’s vice president for the Asia region and a former director-general of the Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD).

According to PARC’s Ahmed, high moisture levels in the air have also led to fungus and insect infestations.

Production drops

Officials at the federal food security and research ministry in Islamabad say they expect wheat production from rain-fed land to be 30 percent lower than normal as a result of the extreme weather.

Ghulam Rasul, chief meteorologist at the PMD, said that although hailstorms can be forecast six to 12 hours in advance, the damage they cause to crops cannot be staved off.

“We had predicted both torrential rains and hailstorms on March 23 and 24 in the upper and central parts of the country, and dust storms and intermittent rains for two to four days in the last week of March in southern and coastal areas,” he said.

“Since these untimely or unseasonal rains and hailstorm came at a time when most of the winter crops such as wheat, mustard, vegetables were near harvest, nothing could be done to save the standing crops,” he explained.

Ibrahim Mughal, chairman of Agri Forum Pakistan, a nongovernmental farmers’ body based in Lahore, said the government has consulted with representatives of farmers’ groups about ways to make a national insurance programme effective.

The views of smallholders are key because their share of cultivation is around 75 percent.

“We have suggested that, without a mass awareness campaign about the benefits of crop insurance and subsidising premiums for small or subsistence farmers…the insurance programme is unlikely to win the hearts of farmers,” said Mughal.

This article first appeared on the Thomson Reuters Foundation news service

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/04/201342312421913125.html