The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) on Monday appealed to the federal government to exclusively grant a loan of Rs10 billion to farmers for their financial support and strengthen agricultural economy in Sindh, and expressed profound concerns over a significant reduction in the cultivation of cotton, vegetables, paddy and many other crops due to an acute shortage of water supply to the irrigation fields.
Reportedly, SCA’s representatives held an emergent meeting in Hyderabad in which its president Qabool Muhammad Khatian gave a telephonic speech in which he demanded ‘payment of arrears of Rs 4 billion’ from owners of sugar mills to the growers on the priority basis.
They asserted that water scarcity, particularly in the months of March, April and May, has heavily affected yields of the crops, thus causing massive financial losses to the growers.
Furthermore, they demanded another agricultural loans of Rs100,000 or below for small farmers to enable them to recover from the effects of fluctuating crop prices, and said that they should be given a three-year repayment schedule to ease the debt burden on them.
Moreover, they expressed fears over the consequences of a sudden decrease in cotton price by Rs1000 per 40 kilos in Karachi while the international market rate remained unchanged.
The meeting also slated suspension of water supply from the Nara canal for the last two weeks, and said that paddy crops were badly affected to the lack of water.
Meanwhile, farmers accused Irrigation department’s officers of inefficiency and maladministration, and claimed that there was sufficient amount of water in river and canals but was not being supplied to their fields.
They demanded a stern action to be taken against corrupt officers in the department.
Ad Spend Your Summer With Charming … UkrainianCharm Try now Besides, SCA general secretary Zahid Bhurgri, Mir Imdad Talpur, Asghar Noonari, Mir Abdul Karim Talpur, Muhammad Khan Sarejo, Haji Nisar Memon, Murad Ali Khan Nizamani and others were also present in the meeting.
Published in Daily Times, August 28th 2018.

Xylem, a US company in the water business, finds a need to open a second factory in India to make pumps.
The location and investment are yet to be finalised, the company’s President and CEO, Patrick K Decker, told BusinessLine.
The company, which incidentally, has been called to take a look at how it can help in de-watering operations in Kerala, is overwhelmed by the demand in the country.
“We have run out of capacity,” Decker said.
He called supply chain in India a “constraint” and said Xylem would need to develop it.
Pipeline condition assessment and leak detection is another growing area in India, Decker said, adding that a lot of machine learning was involved in pipeline health, resulting in predicting “when and where the next leak could occur.” Sewage treatment is yet another area of high growth in India — Xylem provides turnkey solutions, produces all of treatment plants except the civil works.
H Bala, Managing Director of Xylem Water Solutions India, observed that capacity exists in the country to treat just a fourth of the 13 million litre of sewage that is produced daily.
A background note provided by the company says that over 90 per cent of the waste water is discharged into rivers, lakes and ponds untreated, which leads to contamination of water sources.
As a result, India uses about 250 cubic km of ground water each year, which is about a quarter of the global ground water use.
If this situation continues, the country will face severe water scarcity by 2050.

Previously, President Sisi had encouraged Vietnamese industrial sector to invest in Egypt, pointing out whilst addressing the Egyptian-Vietnamese business forum in Hanoi in 2017 that Egypt is one of the top countries for return on investment (ROI) in terms of incentives offered to investors.
Commenting on the Vietnamese President’s visit, Member of Parliament Emad saad said Monday that Quang’s visit implies the strong cooperation and partnership between the two countries in a multitude of fields and subfields, most notably investment and trade sectors.
President Quang’s visit aims to search possible developments in the economic, trade and investment field; the meeting also seeks to enhance cooperation opportunities in agriculture, culture and tourism fields, MP Hamouda said in a Monday statement.
Vietnam wishes to make economic co-operations with Egypt in different fields, especially agriculture field, Hamouda announced.
On an international level, the Egyptian and Vietnamese Presidents are set to discuss the crisis in the Middle East and its effects on trade and investment within the region.
Possible cooperation Main fields tackled by both countries include developing fisheries, rice cultivation in areas of scarce water, and manufacturing ships, according to a previous statement by Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid.
Egypt is suffering water scarcity and passed a law to reduce water-intensive crops such as rice and sugarcane, and the country could be turned from a rice exporter to importer.
President Sisi welcomed Thưởng and his accompanying delegation, praising the bilateral relations between the two countries, which saw improvement during Sisi’s visit to Hanoi in September 2017, the statement added.
Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry met Thưởng and his delegation on Thursday, discussing ways of reinforcing the relations in all fields, said Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid in a statement.
The pair also met with Vietnamese companies operating in communications and textile sectors, to present investment opportunities in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone).

Lethbridge Herald Deep inside the Innovation Space in the Trades, Technologies and Innovation Facility at the Lethbridge College is multiple tons of southern Alberta’s most common soil types that sit inside three massive, custom-built wooden bins, to test subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) systems that work without the variable factors of wind, rain or gophers.
The applied research project is led by Dr. Willemijn Appels, the college’s Mueller Applied Research Chair in Irrigation Science.
Alfalfa crops are being grown in the soil, which is fuelled by water delivered through below-the-surface pipes directly to the root zone.
Sensors in the soil and Plexiglas windows on the bins give a rare look into how the water moves in various soil types.
“You really want to test subsurface drip irrigation in a representative scale and you need quite a bit of soil to make sure that your water moves in a way that you could experience in the field,” says Appels, in a media release.
“We decided to create that experimental setting indoors so we can do experiments year round and get a better look in fine detail at what happens with the water and the crops when you’re irrigating them from within the root zone.” The types of soil being used for the study include Grassy Lake sand, Lomond loam, and Coaldale clay which were donated by local farmers to be used in the testing.
Each bin is three-by-six metres and nearly a metre deep, providing an almost perfectly controlled environment to test subsurface drip irrigation.
“In Alberta, we have some weird little corners or parcels here and there that could use a different type of irrigation and not automatically suited to pivot irrigation,” says Appels.
“We believe in this and we know this will be one of the systems for the future.
We believe in it for water usage, to spread water more efficiently and to open up for acres.” The one-year research project has support from Southern Irrigation, and funding from a $50,000 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Applied Research and Development grant, and another $20,000 from the Regional Innovation Network of Southern Alberta.

Dhavalikar spoke after commissioning the Rs 52 crore Mhaisal water treatment plant at Panchwadi in Shiroda, Ponda, on Sunday.
The PWD minister also switched on the automation unit of the 10-MLD fully automated plant.
The entire plant spread over the 42,136 sqm at the Gawaliwada plateau atop Panchwadi hillock in Shiroda constituency will cater to drinking water needs of Shiroda and Panchwadi, part of Borim and Sanvordem.
The PWD minister said that as per the Rural Development Agency suggestions, rural people need 40 litres of water per head per day and urban people needs 125 litres of water per head per day.
But, rural people use about 125 litres of water and urban people use 200 litres of water per head per day on an average.
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The remaining 118 litres of water goes to the gutters,” Dhavalikar said, further appealing to people to use water resources reasonably.
Sawaikar also stressed on the need for water conservation.
“It is the joint responsibility of the people and government to make the water available to all,” he said.
The legislator also suggested that there could be a passage created between the Mhaisal dam and the water treatment plant and it should be developed as a tourist destination, so the local panchayat could earn some revenue.

With studies firmly predicting a higher number of people in the cities of the world, Dhaka is set to suffer from an impending water crisis and consequently increasing pollution.
If wastewater is not treated, the rivers will be polluted, she told The Daily Star.
By 2050, the situation will be unbearable, she added.
Another report on groundwater management in coastal areas by Dr Thomas Himmelsbach from the German Federal Institute’s Geosciences and Natural Resources division, said Bangladesh would be facing land subsidence, among other problems, because of its heavy dependence on groundwater.
The study also predicted water scarcity in Bangladesh coupled with the demographic change due to the slight sea level rise.
The German study also noted Bangladesh’s overwhelming use of groundwater for irrigation remarking that it should rather be conserved for human consumption as it is always safe.
The obvious advice of using surface water for irrigation was also repeated by the study with a warning that continued exploitation of the resource might endanger Bangladesh in the near future.
The importance of groundwater is further strengthened by the observation that sea-level rise will lead to higher salinity which will only be exacerbated with more seawater intrusion or flooding.
Dr Himmelsbach recommends groundwater governance to minimise the threats to freshwater reserves in coastal aquifers.
But in the context of more urbanisation and more river pollution, the researcher from the Netherlands, Dr Strokal said, “I think a combination of green and grey technology can tackle the situation.” Stockholm is hosting the world leaders, water experts, development professionals and CEOs at the World Water Week to discuss solutions to impending crises around the world.

Marketprognosis.com Publish a New Market Research Report On “Global Rotary Pump Market – Growth, Trends and Forecasts (2018 – 2023)” which contains global key player’s survey information and forecast to 2023.
Overview of the Global Rotary Pump Market: The Global Rotary Pump Market was valued at USD 4.516 Billion in 2017.
The low production had a direct impact on the drilling and oil field services.
On a comparatively smaller scale, wastewater from a city of 10 million households contains enough nutrients to fertilize about 500,000 ha.
of farmland, which in turn, may produce 1.5 million metric ton of crops.
The growing necessity for wastewater management is expected to directly influence the growth of the rotary pump market during the forecast period.
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The second and even far challenging phase for him has just begun and it is all about changing the destiny of his people.
In his long struggle, Khan lambasted corruption as the chief reason of the country’s problems and promised to root it out by introducing a clean and accountable government if given a chance to rule.
He takes office amidst gigantic problems in the country.
Militancy is another serious domestic issue.
Khan has been a vehement supporter of talks with militants who wreaked havoc in the country.
He was dubbed by his opponents as "Taliban Khan."
The second category of challenges is Pakistan’s foreign policy.
On the top of the list is the strained ties with the United States.
The root cause is ongoing violence in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
The most important strategic and economic partner of Pakistan is China.

Unexpectedly high rainfall was a reason for high water levels in the dam.
But despite high rainfall and numerous water sources, many districts in Kerala including Palakkad face scarcity of clean drinking water.
The 52m high Mullaperiyar dam situated in Kerala is one such dam with years of repair behind it.
With the floods, the situation has only been aggravated.
About 80 per cent of drinking water needs are sustained by groundwater.
Quite evidently rainfall is the main source for increasing groundwater levels but is also found to impact deeper aquifers.
If systems are in place, the thus collected water can be sent to the processing facilities.
Adoption of community-based watershed management systems can also greatly help along with encouraging the recycling and reusing of water.
It has been forecasted that in the coming years water scarcity will reach dangerously high levels.
Abundance of water in the state could mean that water once processed could even be exported as a precious commodity to other states in the country.

Nashik: The state government has sanctioned around Rs 600 crore to implement water supply schemes in as many as 574 villages of the district under the National Rural Drinking Water Scheme for 2018-19.
The National Rural Drinking Water Scheme was stayed by the Centre in 2015, instructing the concerned departments to implement the schemes only in villages eligible under the Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana.
As a result, the water supply schemes were implemented in a few villages of the district.
Meanwhile, state water supply and sanitation minister Babanrao Lonikar was constantly following up the issue with the Centre for lifting the stay on implementation of the water supply scheme.
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Given the open-defecation free status of the district, maximum number of villages has been included for implementing the National Rural Drinking Water Scheme.
“A total of Rs 603.47 crore has been made available to the district from the state’s water supply and sanitation department,” the official said.
Earlier, 51 water supply schemes were implemented for 102 villages of the district under the chief minister’s Rural Drinking Water Supply Scheme for Rs 44.22 crore.
“Over the past four years the effort has been to complete the incomplete schemes approved under the National Rural Drinking Water Scheme and Bharat Nirman Yojana,” the official said.
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