Coastal women rebuild life by combating soil salinity

HYDERABAD: Zarina, a peasant, looks at her precious fodder crops - jantar (Sesbania), barseem (Egyptian clover), and lucerne (Alfalfa) - standing on saline land in coastal village Anb Ratto near Mirpur Sakro, Thatta district.

These crops have the quality of nitrogen fixation, which helps reclaim degraded land and make it productive again. Farmers in the area never imagined they could regain the highly saline land degraded by persistent canal water shortage and increasing sea intrusion.

Zarina harvested barseem quite recently and sold it in Mirpur Sakro market at Rs350/maund. She said the fodder would continue yielding for the next 3-4 months and she expected to reap six harvests, which would be enough to feed her small family.

Around 30-35 years ago, the area was rich in agriculture. It mainly produced major food crops like red rice, banana and traditional varieties of vegetables. Elderly farmers recall the days when some of them experimented to grow watermelon and melons, which turned out to be productive in terms of market value during the period between 1985 and 1990. These food crops were inspiring products for local farmers, providing better source of income to many families in the fields of picking, collecting, packing and loading the product for market.

Later in 1990-91, the farmers witnessed a sudden crop disease, which killed the entire watermelon and melon plants and lessened productivity. Then they saw increasing salinity in the coastal area, which left them in a lurch.

Decreasing fertility forced many farmers to opt for other professions. Local activists said that the once fertile coastal land has now turned brackish, limiting food security.

Despite being nearer to the flourishing town, Anb Ratto dwellers do not have basic facilities, such as road, safe drinking water, sanitation, school and electricity.

Another peasant Shahida, wants to grow traditional red and irri-6 rice varieties on her reclaimed piece of land in the forthcoming crop season. Before cultivating rice, she has regained the land through harvesting leguminous multi-fodder crops and vegetables.

Living in village Ibrahim Pitafi, near Sakro she has prepared a one acre piece of family land. She tried to grow chillies and tomato, the most valuable crops in the coastal region, but failed due to high salinity.

Farmers said they have experimented with alfalfa for the first time in the area. A group of 22 women farmers were leading the community in reclaiming the salinity affected soils. They followed the traditional practice of using farmyard and bio compost manure to treat saline land, making it cultivable for crops.

A famous distributary Narri Chhach was the main source of drinking water and irrigation, but it was facing water shortages. Thus farmers were experiencing shortage of drinking water as well as irrigation water.

Despite challenges, some peasant women still have cattle heads, cows and goats for milk to feed their children. These animal breeds survived on dry fodder and wild shrubs. However, now they can also access fresh fodder from the fields in the vicinity.

Pakistan is still considered a largely agriculture-based economy, but salinity has been impacting the country significantly, with approximately six million hectares already affected.

This has not only reduced agricultural productivity, but has also severely impacted livelihoods of poor farming communities.

The problem is further exacerbated due to climate change impacts like drier winters and irregular monsoon rains in the southern region, mainly Sindh.

National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 2018 shows that Sindh was in a critical nutrition emergency, in which district Thatta was more vulnerable and drought affected.

The report indicates that in Sindh, 45.5 percent children under five years of age were stunted, while 23.3 percent suffer from wasting. Multiple factors affect the situation, and require multi-sectoral nutrition sensitive and nutrition-specific integrated response.

Action Against Hunger (ACF International), Sindh Agriculture Extension and Soil Science department of the Sindh Agriculture University Tandojam have taken research-based action together for producing salt tolerant fodder, which benefits the land to improve productivity and lessen salinity.

The researchers have extended help to farming communities in climate sensitive areas of district Thatta under soil reclamation programme through promotion of salinity resilient fodder crops.

The women farmers have received free of cost seeds and fertiliser with cash grant for land preparation, enabling them to grow green leguminous fodders for combating salinity and improving food security.

In Sindh, it is estimated that the impact of soil salinity alone was responsible for between 40-60 percent reductions in the production of major crops grown in recent years. Furthermore, the challenge of salinity was further exacerbated in the costal districts of Sindh, where reduction in mangroves forests and reduction of downstream flow of Indus River has resulted in sea indentation.

Sea intrusion has left thousands of acres of land barren. Loss of land has resulted in migration of coastal communities and abandoning of lands.

In addition, lack of sound adaption methods at the community as well as government departments has further aggravated the situation.

So far, no systematic efforts have been launched by the government to engage the communities to adopt agriculture techniques that would enable them to replenish their farming activities on a sustainable ground.

Women farmers believe that for the sustainable cultivation and marketing of green fodders, farmers needed such facilities and access to equitable distribution of water to be able to manage their productive resources sustainably.