EDITORIAL: It's about time somebody made some noise about the recent practice, especially in Punjab, of planting two rice crops every season because of the simple, and very understandable, reason that it is a water-intensive crop and we are now a water-scarce country that should be bracing for severe shortages sooner rather than later. Indeed, advice from a group of farmers that we should learn some important lessons from some neighbouring countries that we don't like to learn too many lessons from and enact legislation to restrict rice plantation to one time every season makes a lot of sense. Because if we keep going down this road, this resource would dry up a lot sooner than it would otherwise and then there wouldn't be enough water left under the ground to support two crops every year anyway. So why not come down to one right now, when there is still time and still some water left that we haven't wasted with nothing to show?
Some farmers salivating at the prospect of increased earnings must be made to realise some very important things before they let a temporary bulge compromise long-term productivity as well as income. Two-time sowing leads to production of coarse types of rice; so it's no surprise that production of such types has been increasing for the last few years. This will, ultimately, compromise quality, which means it is only a matter of time before at least some of our orders start going to other countries with better and more sensible cropping patterns. Rice is, after all, the second main staple food crop of the country after wheat and also the second best foreign exchange earner from exports after cotton. It contributes 3.5 percent to the value-added sector and 0.7 percent to GDP. Therefore, the focus of everybody in the public and private sectors should be on finding ways that nurture the sowing pattern in a way that does not hurt long-term productivity and also on protecting our traditional export markets while making all efforts to find new ones.
Neither is possible if we throw away what little water we have left so carelessly. Farmers must also be made to understand concerns of climate activists that by producing excess rice for hurried exports we are in fact exporting our water to the rest of the world. Very soon this will put us in a very difficult situation. Less water will not just mean less rice and cotton and therefore less export revenue. It will also mean more deaths from malnutrition, more children born stunted, and more hunger and starvation in a country already struggling to manage its very high poverty and population growth rates with its low GDP growth rate. This government made much noise about water scarcity when it took over, which was a welcome change from the past when this problem more or less went unnoticed, but the talk of more dams and expectation of a government-headed drive to completely change the way we live, in order to preserve more water, seem to have dropped down the priority list.
Perhaps stirring the debate about one or two rice crops every season is a good way to bring everybody's attention back to this important issue. The government must remember and honour its pledge to treat water shortage, especially wastage, as a national crisis and also to stitch together an exhaustive policy to deal with it. If that means enacting legislation to keep some parts of the bigger economy from wasting precious natural resources, as indeed other countries have been forced to do, then so be it. It's better to take this bull by the horns right now than to run from pillar to post when the water crisis is really upon us.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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