Government imports poor quality Atta

[Awesome]

It's rumored to be 3 yr old Atta from Azerbaijan.

Some people are like the atta turns into liquid, some people are like, its flammable!

And its 20rps more expensive!

Crazy!

 

[Vinod2070]

Why is this so? Is there no wheat/Atta available in the international market?

 

[Awesome]

There is a shortage. Hillary Clinton warned against using BIO fuel, by converting corn and other food products to oil. Interestingly Shaukat Aziz had been warning about using such bio fuel. Now there is a world food shortage.

Pakistan being an agricultural country is being poorly managed and such ridiculous foreign Atta is being purchased to make up for its rising costs.

Somebody needs to fire Ishaq, YESTERDAY!

 

[Bushroda]

Nothing new.. happens everywhere. Reminds me of gasoline crisis in Scotland a couple of weeks back when the employees of the largest scottish refinery decided to go on strike. Few of the gas stations jacked up the price of gasoline upto £20/litre in the event of scarcity of fuel.

This is what the world has come to.
Light up your cigerette if somebody house is on fire.

 

[Awesome]

But it's a bad bad decision.

This is just a crisis right now, its about to get far worse.

1. Build the god-damn dams.
2. Stop selling agricultural areas
3. Invest in growing food domestically
4. Get some technology pumped into the existing farms

 

[Neo]

But it's a bad bad decision.

This is just a crisis right now, its about to get far worse.

1. Build the god-damn dams.
2. Stop selling agricultural areas
3. Invest in growing food domestically
4. Get some technology pumped into the existing farms

Introduce high yield GM seeds.

 

[Vinod2070]

But it's a bad bad decision.

This is just a crisis right now, its about to get far worse.

1. Build the god-damn dams.
2. Stop selling agricultural areas
3. Invest in growing food domestically
4. Get some technology pumped into the existing farms

I agree with most of your points except point-1. I am not sure about Pakistani Punjab but in Indian Punjab and Haryana, most of the irrigation happens using ground water. Today and last Sunday's TOI contained excellent articles by an Indian economist (Swami Ankaleshwara Iyer) on this aspect and the proposed solution to invest in aquafier management than on large dams. I can post those articles if there is interest here.

I liked the idea. They enable the farmers to get water on demand to grow high value crops rather than depending on some corrupt and inept politicians whims to release the water at a date and time of his choosing.

Much more cost effective and decentralized as a bonus too.

 

[Vinod2070]

Article-1 published last Sunday.

Wasting $50 bn on major irrigation-Swaminomics-Swaminathan A Aiyar-Columnists-Opinion-The Times of India

Ostensibly to help farmers, the 11th five-year Plan allocates nearly $50 billion to surface irrigation (dam reservoirs, tanks and canals). This will be a huge waste of money on obsolete, ineffective irrigation concepts dating from the 19th century, says irrigation expert Tushaar Shah in a forthcoming book.

Farmers themselves have moved massively away from surface irrigation to wells and tubewells, even in canal command areas. In the Bhakra command area, three-quarters of farmers today use pumped rather than canal water. In effect, canals are used more for recharging aquifers than direct irrigation. To that extent, it might be sensible to build smaller, unlined canals that take less space and recharge aquifers better.

India must abandon its existing strategy emphasizing surface irrigation from huge dams and canals. Instead it should focus on aquifer management. This will disappoint crooked politicians and bureaucrats used to getting huge kickbacks from major dam projects. But it is crucial for uplifting rural areas.

Shah says that Indian agriculture will take off if farmers can get assured water on demand, for 15 irrigations each of 800 cu.m/ha. Tubewells can provide this, but dams and canals cannot. The British Raj designed canal systems to irrigate large farms growing a single crop: the canal authorities decided when to release water and how much. This colonial style — often continued after independence — denied farmers the option to grow different crops with different water needs at different times. Most surface systems were designed for providing a limited amount of water for drought protection. Only a few, such as the Bhakra and Mahi systems, could provide water year-round for double or triple cropping.

Not even the Bhakra system provides water on demand, just in time, to suit a farmer's individual crop preference. This drives home the point that canal systems are, by and large, obsolete in modern India. We now have farmers growing a wide variety of crops at any one time, on very small plots. Many farmers grow two or three crops a year.

Most high-value crops — such as vegetables, fruit, flowers, speciality crops — require small doses of water, on demand, and sometimes all year round. Small and marginal farmers need to diversify into high-value crops if they are to make a decent living out of tiny plots. This can only be done with pumped irrigation, not canal flows.

Reservoirs, canals and distributaries in command areas occupy a significant amount of land. Today land is very costly — Rs 20 lakh/acre or more in Haryana and Punjab. Distribution canals take up 4-7% of a farmer's land, and farmers no longer want to give up valuable land for channels that do not assure water when needed. In the Narmada system, many downstream farmers have flatly refused to build distribution channels.

Canal systems have other problems. Poor water control means that farmers near the head of main canals tend to get too much water, and so are obliged to grow water-intensive crops like rice and sugarcane. Farmers in the middle reaches of the system are often the best off. But farmers in the lower reaches often get no water at all. With politicians reducing canal water rates to almost zero, irrigation departments have no cash for maintenance, so canals are getting silted and canal gates are collapsing, hugely reducing the effective irrigated area. The ministry of agriculture estimates that canal irrigation fell from 17 mha in 1990-91 to 14.3 mha in 2002-03, and is still falling.

This figure is disputed by irrigation departments, which have a vested interest in building ever more canal systems. Revenue departments may have lower estimates, in order to explain why they collect so little canal revenue. However, the 2003 NSSO survey (59th round) suggested that 69% of kharif area and 76% of rabi area were irrigated by wells and pumps. Some others put the share of pumped irrigation at 80%. The data are murky since it is difficult to estimate the area irrigated by people buying water from pump-owning neighbours.

India now has the biggest groundwater usage in the world at 250 cu. km/year. The US comes a distant second with a bit over 100 cu. km/year, and China is even further back. India now has over 20 million irrigation wells, and is adding 800,000 more per year. Every fourth cultivator owns a well, and others buy water from well-owners.

From 1803 to 1970 — in the colonial era and early years of independence — surface irrigation dominated. The government referred to large reservoir and canal projects as major irrigation, and well irrigation as minor irrigation. But everything changed with the green revolution. This was based overwhelmingly on tubewells, providing water on demand, and gradually spread over all India. Today, two-third to four-fifth of our irrigated area uses pumped water. Yet the government continues to refer to dam-based irrigation as major, and tubewell-based irrigation as minor. It is still living in the 19th century.

What should India's new irrigation strategy be? I will tackle that issue next week.

 

[Vinod2070]

Article-2 published today.

How to reform power & irrigation-Swaminomics-Swaminathan A Aiyar-Columnists-Opinion-The Times of India

Last week, I showed that spending $50 billion on dams and canals in the 11th Plan would be a waste. Surface irrigation provides water in quantities and at times fixed by the irrigation authorities. This is useless for farmers growing different crops needing different amounts of water at different times. Farmers need just-in-time water on demand. Groundwater and wells can provide that, but not canal systems.

So, the government's strategy must shift from giant dams and canals to aquifer management and joint use of surface water and aquifers. This will increase rural prosperity.

Except in eastern India, uncontrolled pumping is destroying aquifers. Traditional dug-wells for drinking water have run dry, shallow tubewells of small farmers have run dry, and only the deep tubewells of rich farmers reach the falling water table. Possibly participatory conservation by farmers might work. But most politicians think it too risky electorally to confront farmers and reform this system. Yet, without reform many aquifers will collapse.

In his forthcoming book Taming the Anarchy: Groundwater Governance in South Asia, Tushaar Shah of the International Water Management Institute, suggests ways to overcome the problem. I will not bore you with the myriad possibilities, just highlight two strategies: reforming rural power along the lines of Gujarat's Jyotigram, and finding ways to combine surface and groundwater.

Competition between political parties has driven rural power rates towards zero. Chandrababu Naidu's defeat in 2004 was widely ascribed to his charging farmers for power. Yet, Narendra Modi also charged farmers, cut off connections for non-payment, and yet won a big victory in 2007.

Power reforms can win votes if properly designed.

Where power is free, it is viewed by State Electricity Boards (SEBs) as a political gimmick, not a commercial matter. So, they neglect rural distribution, supplying low-voltage power that burns out farmers' pumps and SEB transformers (which are not replaced for months, leaving villages in darkness). Power is supplied erratically for a few hours, mostly at night. Hence, villages cannot develop manufacturing or service industries that need power in the day. So, both agriculture and non-farm activities remain caught in a low-productivity trap.

Gujarat's Jyotigram has separate electric feeder lines for each village, a heavy-duty one for tubewells and a light-duty one for domestic use and small-scale manufacturing and services. This dual-feeder system requires high upfront investment. But it enables SEBs to ration power intelligently. Villages get power 24/7 for non-agricultural purposes, enhancing domestic and commercial possibilities. But tubewell power is rationed for eight hours, providing enough water for crops but saving aquifers from over-pumping. Villagers are willing to pay, and the Gujarat SEB is one of the few profitable ones.

Shah suggests an improvement: power supply should be adjusted for seasonal demand. It could be provided continuously in the 30-40 days of maximum moisture stress, but for only three-four hours at night on other days.
Power plants have idle capacity at night, so generating cost equals just fuel cost. Hence, even the low rural power rate in Gujarat looks economic to the SEB, which now views rural power as a potential profit centre, not a bottomless pit. Naturally, such an SEB will seek to maintain and expand rural power, while SEBs in free-power states will neglect it.

Although groundwater irrigates three-four times as much land as canals, SEBs typically have no agricultural orientation: they are attuned to industrial needs. Jyotigram shows how reforms can help power engineers develop an agricultural focus, and respond to farm needs.

A second innovation favoured by Shah is to harness the existing 10 million dug-wells in hard-rock areas of the west and south for recharging. In alluvial soils in the Gangetic plain, water channeled into wells seeps into the earth below, leaving no water in the well. But hard-rock areas have limited seepage, so wells can store water channeled from canals or rains. This can then provide farmers with just-in-time water, crucial for high-value farming.

Experts have long urged farmers to create ponds on their land to store water. This does not work in alluvial soil where water seeps away. It can work in hard-rock areas of the west and south. These areas, says Shah, already have 10 million dug-wells that can be harnessed. Check dams in hard-rock areas can also store water, but lose more through evaporation because of their large surface. Water from check dams can be pumped into existing wells, reducing evaporation.

In Rajasthan, the government has subsidised farmers to build farm ponds. When canal water is released periodically, farmers use it to fill these ponds, storing water for just-in-time irrigation at the exact time a farmer needs it. Shah claims that this experiment has produced dramatic improvements in land and water productivity.

Many other such innovations are possible, too numerous to relate in this column. Suffice to say that we need a totally new irrigation policy. Major irrigation systems already under construction should be completed. But after that, the policy focus must shift from big canals suitable for 19th century agriculture to power reform and just-in-time water for 21st century agriculture.