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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Pakistan
Index
Pakistan's total land area is about 803,940 square
kilometers. About 48 million hectares, or 60 percent, is
often
classified as unusable for forestry or agriculture
consists
mostly of deserts, mountain slopes, and urban settlements
(see Topography and Drainage
, ch. 2). Some authorities,
however,
include part of this area as agricultural land on the
basis that
it would support some livestock activity even though it is
poor
rangeland. Thus, estimates of grazing land vary
widely--between
10 percent and 70 percent of the total area. A broad
interpretation, for example, categorizes almost all of
arid
Balochistan as rangeland for foraging livestock.
Government
officials listed only 3 million hectares, largely in the
north,
as forested in FY 1992. About 21.9 million hectares were
cultivated in FY 1992. Around 70 percent of the cropped
area was
in Punjab, followed by perhaps 20 percent in Sindh, less
than 10
percent in the North-West Frontier Province, and only 1
percent
in Balochistan.
Since independence, the amount of cultivated land has
increased by more than one-third. This expansion is
largely the
result of improvements in the irrigation system that make
water
available to additional plots. Substantial amounts of
farmland
have been lost to urbanization and waterlogging, but
losses are
more than compensated for by additions of new land. In the
early
1990s, more irrigation projects were needed to increase
the area
of cultivated land.
The scant rainfall over most of the country makes about
80
percent of cropping dependent on irrigation
(see Climate
, ch. 2).
Fewer than 4 million hectares of land, largely in northern
Punjab
and the North-West Frontier Province, are totally
dependent on
rainfall. An additional 2 million hectares of land are
under
nonirrigated cropping, such as plantings on floodplains as
the
water recedes. Nonirrigated farming generally gives low
yields,
and although the technology exists to boost production
substantially, it is expensive to use and not always
readily
available.
Data as of April 1994
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