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Millions Of Hectares Of Land Remain Uncultivated In Afghanistan

Officials from Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) said Afghanistan has 7.5 million hectares of arable land but only a small portion of the land is cultivated due to a lack of water and insecurity. 

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 MAIL says. From non-arable land, only 1.44 million hectares was cultivated this year. 

Afghanistan has 3.6 million hectares of irrigated land and 3.7 million hectares of non-irrigable land.

“The problems (for farmers) is the lack of access to land due to insecurity, lack of irrigation canals, and other issues which have remained from the past and have affected our activities in this respect,” said Lotfullah Rashid, spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, a number of analysts said 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 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 in return a big part of the land remains uncultivated.

Millions Of Hectares Of Land Remain Uncultivated In Afghanistan

Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock says the reasons behind the problem is the lack of access to areas due to insecurity and scarce water resources.

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Officials from Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) said Afghanistan has 7.5 million hectares of arable land but only a small portion of the land is cultivated due to a lack of water and insecurity. 

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 MAIL says. From non-arable land, only 1.44 million hectares was cultivated this year. 

Afghanistan has 3.6 million hectares of irrigated land and 3.7 million hectares of non-irrigable land.

“The problems (for farmers) is the lack of access to land due to insecurity, lack of irrigation canals, and other issues which have remained from the past and have affected our activities in this respect,” said Lotfullah Rashid, spokesman for the Ministry of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, a number of analysts said 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 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 in return a big part of the land remains uncultivated.

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