KABUL (TCA) — Afghanistan has 7.5 million hectares of arable land but only a small portion of that land is cultivated due to a lack of water and insecurity in the war-torn country, TOLOnews reports citing the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock.
At least 2.5 million hectares of land was cultivated this year while over 3.6 million hectares of arable land was ready to be farmed, the ministry says.
Afghanistan has 3.6 million hectares of irrigated land and 3.7 million hectares of non-irrigable land.
Lotfullah Rashid, spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture, said the problems for farmers include the lack of access to land due to insecurity and the lack of irrigation canals.
Analysts say the Afghan government lacks clear and effective plans to use the large water resources in the country.
They suggest that medium-sized and small dams and irrigation canals should be built if the government is not able to implement big projects.
“We completely leave our water to flow into other countries freely such as the water in the Amu River which flows into Turkmenistan and other Central Asian countries,” said Sayed Massoud, lecturer at Kabul University.
Yasin Farahmand, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan, said the lack of fertilized seed and a firm irrigation system are other big challenges for the agriculture sector.
“We should learn from the experiences of our neighboring countries like Iran and Pakistan; these countries have gotten the private sector to help in producing fertilized seed and through this they have considerably increased their products,” he said.
Afghanistan has an annual estimate of seven billion cubic meters of flowing water and according to statistics, 80 percent of the water flows to neighboring countries and as a result a big part of the land remains uncultivated.
