Cultivating Toxic Crops

• by IPS Correspondents (lahore)
• Wednesday, July 25, 2012
• Inter Press Service

LAHORE, Jul 25 (IPS) - At a time when spiraling input costs and perennial shortages of irrigation water are breaking countless farmers’ backs, a small village community on the outskirts of Lahore appears to have been spared.

Hudiara drain winds through thick foliage of shrubs and trees, in the border village of Burki. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

The village of Hudiara, situated close to the Wagah border, falls in the way of a natural storm water channel called the Hudiara Drain, which originates in Batala in India’s Gurdaspur District and flows for nearly 55 kilometres before entering Pakistan.

The farmers here say the drain ensures them of year-round irrigation. What they won’t tell you – either because they don’t know it, or refuse to believe it – is that the water is poisoned.

Hundreds of factories located along the length of the canal dispose of their untreated industrial waste into it. This includes discharge from textile processing and dyeing units, carpet industries, tanneries, dairy plants, food, beverage and oil processing plants and ghee production units.

Municipal wastes are added along the way and the water that finally flows out of farmers’ pumps and into their fields is a toxic cocktail of pollutants.

Farmers and the local municipality are now locked in a fierce battle – with farmers ignoring countless warnings and taboos on the use of the water to irrigate farmland.

“The water is free, its supply regular and its ingredients strong enough to replace fertilisers. Only a fool will reject this deal,” Amanat Ali, a vegetable farmer who distributes his produce to the large population in Lahore, told IPS. He is not worried about the toxic impact of heavy metals in this water.

“Flowing water can never be harmful; it’s the stagnant water that’s bad,” he said confidently when asked about the effects of the water on his agricultural produce and its consumers. It is unsurprising that farmers are reluctant to heed official warnings. Less rainfall and the never-ending construction of roads and housing projects are exhausting ground water supplies, according to Dr. Muhammad Yaseen, associate professor of soil fertility and plant nutrition at the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad.

Yaseen, co-author of a report on heavy metals and their uptake by vegetables in adjoining areas of Hudiara, told IPS very little has been done at the government level to improve the situation in the village.  His team declared the drain water suitable for irrigation only during the monsoon, when rainwater dilutes the effluents to safe levels.

Though the report was released in 2009, farmers continue to use the water for irrigation all year round. Citing the report, Yaseen told IPS that crops irrigated using poisonous water contained metals in higher than desired concentrations. For example, zinc concentration in ghia tori (a type of gourd) was 10 times higher than safe levels.

Brinjals and spinach samples from the village contained iron in higher concentration than the stated guidelines. Nickel content in all the crops except for brinjals were higher than prescribed levels. Cadmium concentration in almost all the plants exceeded the safe limit.

According to the report, food crops quickly absorb cadmium, which is one of the reasons why vegetables grown in Hudiara are oversized. N aseem-ur-Rehman Shah, director of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Punjab Environment Protection Department (EPD) told IPS the irrigation department is about to start a process of lining Hudiara Drain to stop seepage of toxic water into the ground.

He said this process was of the utmost importance since locals are in the habit of drilling for subsurface drinking water, leading to the spread of waterborne diseases such as hepatitis and diarhhoea. Environmentalist Ahmed Rafay Alam told IPS that according to the findings of another study, the drain contains extremely low levels of oxygen and cannot support any form of aquatic life.

Citing an investigative study conducted by the World Wildlife Fund in Pakistan nearly a decade ago, MUAWIN, a community organisation in Lahore, reported that, “the rate of abdominal pains, paralysis of limbs, joint pains and prevalence of arsenic toxicity and eye infection was greater in the respondents of a village along Hudiara Drain.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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