Drought severely damages pomegranate orchards in Farah

FARAH CITY (Pajhwok): A number of gardeners in western Farah province complain that dozens of their pomegranate orchards affected due to acute drought.

Jan Agha, a resident of “Kohdanak” village in Farah City, told Pajhwok Afghan News that dozens of pomegranate orchards dried up and perished due to drought.

He said: “Our village is known as pomegranate village, but dozens of orchards have dried up due to the severe drought and now the village looks like a desert.”

Omid, another resident of the village, said: “Due to the drought in our area, 90 percent of the pomegranate orchards dried up, and if the government does not pay attention to this problem, people may displace to other areas.”

On the other hand, the Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock department, acknowledged this problem, but said the drought not only affected Farah but the entire country.

Abdul Ghani Abid, deputy director of agriculture, told Pajhwok that the drought is common and they had talked to some organizations about the pomegranate orchards in Kohdanak village and were trying to dig deep wells for the people to solve the problems.

Hz/sa