Floods may be devastating parts of Pakistan, but Mukesh Menghwar is facing drought, just a year after he lost six cows, eight goats and his millet crop to extreme rains, according to a report by AlertNet.
The weather extremes are hitting farmers like him hard, pulling them into a debt spiral and worsening poverty, he says.
In May, he took out Rs 65,000 in credit from a local money lender, at a 20 percent interest rate, to buy seed and fertilizer. He also rented a pair of camels for 25 days for another Rs. 6,000to plough his land.
But the rains did not come.
So the 45-year-old farmer, a father of five, has been forced to migrate north with his family to find work in urban areas in an effort to buy food and pay off the loans.
“All of the family members have to work to repay our loans,” he sadly told AlertNet.
According to reports by local non-governmental organisations, more than 600,000 people and tens of thousands of cattle have had to migrate from different areas to escape famine.
Most of the areas in Pakistan are rain-fed and when little rain falls, both people and their animals face disaster.
LONGER RECOVERY:
If droughts hit the desert only ever three or four years, people and their animals have time to recover their losses, locals say. But as changing weather conditions bring droughts and flooding much more frequently, recovery is getting harder.
“Because the agriculture and livestock farming families were still recovering from the heavy damages (caused by last’s year’s devastating rains) to crops and livestock, this year’s drought conditions have multiplied economic and health miseries and sufferings of these pastoral and nomadic families,” said Ali Akbar Rahimo, executive director of the Association for Water, Applied Education and Renewable Energy (AWARE), a not-for-profit local NGO.
Generally, farmers procure fertiliser, seed and other farm inputs on credit each year from local moneylenders and sell some of their crops to clear their loans if there are good rains. Those who cannot often default, and many defaulter families end up in bonded labour at brick lins, or working in factories, shops, or the houses of moneylenders.
Because of the absence of formal government-run lending facilities, most farming families in are at the mercy of moneylenders, whose inflated interest rates can keep poor families trapped in debt for decades.
Drought are also worsening health problems in the district, as people and animals too weak to migrate turn to drinking contaminated water, officials said. Pregnant women and young babies are particularly hard hit.
The district’s deputy commissioner said a ‘situation report’ on the current drought suggested measures to deal with it should include providing food, subsidized fodder and free clean drinking water.
But effectively dealing with climate shifts in the region may require more fundamental changes, from new systems of providing farmer credit to innovations including weather-linked crop insurance and improved water harvesting and storage, experts said.