Water scarcity in Sindh has jeopardized cotton, sugarcane, vegetable and fruit crops. Also, banana orchards are getting chopped down as farmers could not pay the rising prices of light diesel to run their wells. In 2017, growers faced the worst water shortage when they did not receive canal water for two months – February and March. Now, water has not arrived in the canals for the fourth straight month since February 2022.
Mehmood Nawaz Shah, Senior Vice President, Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB), said that water shortage was a subjective term, it was an acute shortage since March and April. “Early Kharif starts in Sindh when it grows 1.3 to 1.4 million acres or 0.55 million hectares of cotton. So far, around 50 percent of cotton sowing has been achieved.”
Source: thenews.com.pk