Murideke:
Caramat Ali’s cows and Buffalos once provided its multi-generation family with milk. But earlier this year, the 61-year-old sold around a dozen Bovin-and spent the proceeds on a set of solar panels.
The Rice Bond in Punjab is now using its panels to operate a pipe well composed of a water well and a motorized groundwater pump. The unit allows Ali to irritate his crops with greater ease and free him from depending on the erratic electricity grid and expensive diesel to drive the pump.
“Water supply to my paddy feed is smoother than before,” he said.
As Pakistan undergoes a sun revolution, farmers such as Ali are increasingly diesel and lattice power for solar -powered pipe wells, according to interviews with 10 breeders, as well as government officials and analysts.
The sun boom has coincided with the rapid depletion of water tables in Pakistan’s most populous province, according to previously non -reported Punjab Water Authority documents seen by Reuters. The documents did not clarify any cause.
Six of the farmers told Reuters that they had begun to irrigate their rice fields far more regularly – including up to several times a day as part of a practice called heart rate watering – which would not have been possible without solar water pumps. Farmers also choose to grow more thirsty rice crops than in previous years, with the size of rice fields in Pakistan, which increases 30% between 2023 and 2025, the US Ministry of Agriculture shows data. Meanwhile, the amount of soil dropped to grow less water -intensive maize 10%.
Details of the extent of Pakistani agriculture’s transition to solar and its influence on groundwater are reported for the first time.
The explosion in the availability of cheap solar panels poses a special threat to the water level in the South Asian bread basket in Punjab.
The water table has shrunk below 60 feet – a level designated as critical by provincial irrigation department – across 6.6% of Punjab from 2024, according to maps published for internal use by the water authorities and seen by Reuters. It marks an increase of approx. 25% between 2020 and 2024, while the deepest pockets – with water levels beyond 80 feet – more than doubled in size in the same period.
Panels and Paddy
Pakistan, one of the world’s most water -tension nations, has found himself involved in conflicts about the resource with his upstream neighbor India, which it briefly fought in May.
But for many farmers in Punjab, the threat to the water table is a problem for tomorrow.
Cultivers have been beaten by an annual fall in the global price of wheat, Punjab’s staples. Poverty in the rural areas of Pakistan spiked at a record high in May 2023 and remains elevated after an international monetary fund’s bailout the year that introduced higher energy rates and taxes.
Contact with Solar has allowed 61-year-old Mohammad Naseem to save some RS2 million or more than quadrupled Pakistan’s gross domestic product per year. Inhabitant-in-power costs since he bought his panels four years ago.
The ability to irrigate as desired has increased production modestly by between 400 and 600 kg of rice every year, he said, although the quality of the crop has improved, giving Naseem the opportunity to achieve better prices.
“I wash it with water. I sleep near it,” said Naseem, who awards his panels so much that he dismantles them every night and brings them home from the fields to prevent possible theft.
“Solar panels must be installed at all costs,” said 38-year-old living farmer Rai Abdul Ghafoor, who has saved for a purchase. While poor farmers like Ghafoor are still dependent on diesel and net power, many agricultural-dependent villages have collected sums to buy the panels as a common property.
Haji Allah Rakha, an 80 -year -old farmer who has 16 panels, shares them with two other families. “They contribute, and we all benefit,” he said.
“Farmers share, rent and move panels like tractors,” said Lahore-based solar panel trader Shahab Qureshi. “They sell land, jewelry or take loans just to get it. Within five to six months, your return on investment is fulfilled.”
Lift the groundwater
Federal and provincial officials have begun to pay more attention to the slow-boiling crisis, especially after India suspended its participation in a compliance with the sharing of water from the critical Indus river system earlier this year.
Punjab began Aquifer-Reppilots aiming for slowing down depletion and ensuring stable groundwater supply, in more than 40 places before India’s April relocation, although officials said such projects have grown in significance since.
“This is our little effort to return the proper share to the aquifer,” said Adnan Hassan, a researcher for Punjab’s Irritition department. “If contaminated water is injected (due to over -extraction), the next generation will suffer.”
