India’s Food Bowl Heads Toward Desertification

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https://eos.org/articles/indias-food-bowl-heads-toward-desertification

Source: By Gurpreet Singh, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Water-guzzling rice consumes more water than Punjab can recharge. If current irrigation rates continue, the state will empty its groundwater reserves within 20 years. ...In the mid-1960s, Punjab’s agricultural sector blossomed, owing in part to federal subsidies for fertilizers and pesticides. In the 1970s, the state government established a corporation to access the region’s abundant groundwater by constructing thousands of wells. Today at least 40% of India’s surplus food stocks are harvested in Punjab. ...In the pursuit of growing more rice and wheat, more than 1.4 million agriculture tube wells have been dug in Punjab over the past 60 years. On average, groundwater levels have sunk 51 centimeters every year. Last year, groundwater levels fell more than 60 centimeters, said Gopal Krishan, a hydrology and soil scientist at India’s National Institute of Hydrology.... “This is alarming,” he said. More than 3.35 cubic meters of water are needed to grow 1 kilogram of rice, according to India’s Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. Cultivated over 2.7 million hectares, an estimated 11 billion kilograms of rice grow in Punjab every season. The water demanded by these rice crops (equivalent to nearly 36 billion cubic meters of water) amounts to 27 times more than the yearly household consumption (1.3 billion cubic meters) by the 28 million people living in the state....

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