As noted above, all 107 respondents included in the survey are members of a karez, i.e., they own a share of the land irrigated by a karez; they have contributed cash and/or labor to building or extending a karez, and they depend on the output of karez-irrigated agriculture for a majority of their household income and subsistence. The average reported age of the karez is 219 years, although one is thought to be 500-years-old. The average length of the karez owned by the households surveyed is 4 km. (range: 1-9 km). The average depth of the mother well is 54 feet (range: 9 - 96 feet). Well depth is measured by a man’s height (approximately six feet).
In terms of contributions, 67 percent of the households have contributed cash to karez building/ maintenance or extension, with an average expenditure of Rs 4,284 per household (range Rs 300 to Rs 30,000). Only 36 percent of households report contributing labor to karez maintenance. This is partly because the above-ground labor is arduous, and the underground labor required is quite specialized.
The average value attributed to the land, by the owners, is Rs 7,48,250 (80 responses), although these values are not necessarily congruent with market prices, in the absence of a viable market. The fact that only 4 percent of families reported that they had sold land or water rights in the last 5 years also indicates the lack of a viable market.
In terms of efficacy of the karez system as a reliable source of water supply, 83 percent of the respondents reported that there is some water in the wells, although 55 percent said there is far less water than they require. In terms of technology, 87 percent of households report using only karez water for flood irrigation: i.e., they utilize no other technologies for carrying or distributing karez water to the fields. However, the rankings of drought differed widely. About 72 percent respondents ranked this drought as “the worst ever” and another 25 ranked it as “very bad.”
Families with crop production as the mainstay of their livelihood, reported a significant reduction in crop yields, loss of livestock, widespread loss of date palm plants, and in particular large reductions in date harvests, despite the hardy and drought-resistant character of the date species grown. Date farmers had been inflicted with substantial losses to their investments both due to the death of plants and yield losses, and this has clearly affected daily wage laborers dependent on the date enterprises. Insufficient water supplies from the karez system are to blame. Similarly, production of other fruits and vegetables has been affected seriously. This has even forced some households to sell land to buy water, invest in new deep wells, turbine pumps, and extend and rehabilitate karez, but these measures have not solved the long-term problem, and they are only available to the relatively well-off. Households, whose primary source of income is employment, and whose agricultural incomes are only supplemental, have to some extent been resilient to drought- related economic stress, which points to the importance of income diversification and employment creation in the non-agricultural sector for the rural poor.
Families dependent mainly on livestock ranching echo grave concerns to their livelihoods due to livestock death, loss of animal products such as milk, wool, mohair, and goat hair, lack of forage, need for supplementary feeding, and rising forage prices and non-availability of fodder in town markets. Further, livestock had been diminished by disease. This forced many desperate families to cull and downsize their herds. At present, the number of livestock owned is very low, compared with the potential for livestock production under the right conditions. Families reported owning an average of 13 animals (99% of respondents), a majority of them sheep and goats. Normally, livestock serve as a buffer stock and help mitigate income loss in crops, but the situation is reversed now. Livestock are a net liability, due to lack of forage and deterioration of rangeland and water supplies. Some herders and farming families have resorted to cutting down permanent forest plantations and
selling trees to help support their subsistence income and livelihood needs. This clearly points to unsustainable and degrading practices in the management of communal rangeland and forest resources.
The impending drought crisis and ensuing reduction in water supplies from the karez have taken their toll on household incomes, as can be gleaned from the impacts on crop, fruits, and livestock productivity. The overall impact is a fall in household income. Table 3.2 gives source-wise household incomes. Remittances are a major source of income, and about one-third of households receive remittances.
Table 3.2. Livelihood sources and average household incomes.
Income source No. of Percent of household deriving Average income
households income per response per response (Rs)
Crops (excluding dates) per season) 40 37.03 10,350
Date production (per season) 70 64.82 26,403
Daily wages (per month) 14 12.96 3,021
Trading (per month) 9 8.33 3,933
Service/employment (per month) 36 33.33 13,210
Other sources (annual) 34 31.50 133,265
Among horticultural products, dates are the most valuable item produced by the farmers in the survey, providing the highest yields and the highest income per maund (40 Kg). Over 98 percent of the households in the survey own date palms, owning an average of 278 trees (range = 20-2000 trees). One household owning 2,000 trees is facing economic ruin, as drought has lasted for 7 years and their date income has been reduced to zero. In 1998, each of their trees yielded 50 maunds (2,000 Kg) of dates but in 2002 they yielded nothing.
Overall, 9 percent of the households reported that their date palms produced nothing at all in 2002. Decapitalization of land values and negative returns to investments are therefore, self- evident. Date production has both consumption and cash value. Amongst 105 households, an average of 48 maunds were sold and 16 maunds consumed. The average annual income (64.8 % of the households reporting) from dates was Rs 26,403, with the range of income from Rs 800 to Rs 300,000. Since dates are an extremely important cash crop in Turbat, this is particularly significant, and has negative implications for restoring the area’s productivity. Some of the very poor have been reduced to eating koosh, the inner edible portion of the date palm. The koosh from one tree provides a single meal for half-a-dozen people. The average value of a date palm two to three years ago was Rs 1,000, but now there is no market for the wood, and the trees are dying.
Dates are not the only crop affected, rather, water scarcity and drought has reduced the yield of every crop, in some cases to almost nothing, as table 3.3 shows. These findings are congruent with Qazi’s study of central Baluchistan, which found that: “….all of the respondents registered a decline in their standards of livelihood during this period [and] all of them associated this decline with increasing scarcity of water. All the respondents recalled 1998 as a bad year and all of them attributed it to less rainfall in that year. Years 1999 and 2000 were declared bad years by all the respondents due to a total absence of rains and in 80 percent of the villages, the drop in ground water level was also stated as an indicator of water scarcity…. In 90 percent of the respondent villages, a sharp decrease in cropped area occurred in the year 1998 while 10 percent of the villages reported no crop at all during that year. Respondents from 28 percent of villages reported a further
Item Average crop yields reported 1998 2002 Decrease Dates (maunds) 77 34 56% Wheat (maunds) 30 3 90% Fodder (dagars) 92 75 18% Pulses (maunds) 11 1 91% Vegetables (maunds) 19 2 89%