Barani areas require resources to harvest rainwater for improving agriculture, alleviate poverty.

MULTAN -- Directorate of Soil Conservation, Field Wing of Punjab Agriculture Department developed more than 3000 water harvesting bodies having live storage capacity of 0.1-million-acre feet in Barani areas of the province, however there was still much potential to conserve rainwater for enhanced agricultural production and alleviating poverty.

This was disclosed by DG Field Agriculture Ghulam Siddique while talking to reporter.He remarked that country was facing the issue of water crisis mainly due to climate change and mismanagement of available water resources. According to a report of an international body,Pakistan is the 14th most water stressed country in the world, facing acute water shortage. Moreover, being an agricultural country, this water shortage has direct impact on the nation's economy which is dependent on agriculture and water to grow crops, he maintained. Therefore, if this problem of water shortage prevails, it might have long financial and ecological impacts on the country.

The DG added, due to climate change, the winter season in the country has shrunk from four to two months and the monsoon season has become unpredictable in the past few years. Around 70% of total rainfall was received during monsoon season (July-September), which causes floods in the country due to lack of rainwater harvesting bodies. So, it is crucial to practice systematic conservation practices and water harvesting techniques to trap maximum rainwater to avoid flood losses and to improve the productivity of crops, especially in "Barani" region where Agriculture is entirely dependent on rainwater.

About Barani tract, he stated that it was consist of 13 districts namely, Rajanpur, D.G Khan, Layyah, Bhakkar, Khushab, Mianwali, Chakwal, Attock, Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Gujrat, Sialkot and Narowal, accounts up to 12.6 million acres of land. However, in spite of all natural and human resource, this region has not been able to develop at par with the other areas of the province due to lack of water storage reservoirs. It results low agricultural productions. Due to insufficient water harvesting bodies, most of the rain water was being wasted which also causes soil erosion at large scale. It was estimated that runoff generated due to precipitation as well as hill torrents causes one billion tons of soil to erode annually in this tract when water flows to its peak during the monsoon season, revealed the agriculture expert.

About performance of Soil Conservation...