KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Agriculture contributes 22% to the KP provincial GDP and provides employment to 44% of the labor force. Most of the cultivatable land is owned by smallholder farmers. KP has the highest incidence of poverty in Pakistan. Lack of access to water is a major driver of poverty. Improved access could lead to improve peoples’ well-being and harmony. Culturable Command Area is 1,470,595 acres. The total annual surface water available in Pakistan is 145 MAF. From which KPs annual allocation is 8.78 MAF out of which 5.97 MAF water is utilized in KP. This is an annual surplus of 2.81 MAF due to the non-availability of Irrigation infrastructure. A major irrigation system has not been constructed in the past few decades.
KP farmland is small and people depend on the available land for their basic food needs. Although there is irrigated agriculture in KP (0.870 million hectares), about 0.760 million hectares area comprises of rainfed cultivation production only one crop per year with very low production. An area of 1.245 million hectares lays barren because of want of water and has been termed as culturable wasteland. Out of the total of 34 districts in the province (including the newly merged tribal districts), 19 districts are rainfed while the remaining irrigated districts also have major tracts of land that depend on rainfall for agriculture.

The agriculture sector has both forward and backward linkages with almost all other sectors that acts as engine of growth for the rest of the country. However, the performance of the agriculture sector in terms of water use and capacity as well as quality has remained very low for the last few decades. more importantly, the crop water productivity has been lowest than its potential because almost 50% agriculture lands of KP are rainfed; the main limiting factor being water.