Kabul (HRNW) – In a good year, farmer and mother-of-four Zahra Tawakole can produce enough potatoes from her hectare of land in the small Afghan village of Raquel to get her family through to the next harvest.
Over the past two decades, however, weather patterns have become more extreme, Tawakole said, with flooding and dry spells devastating farms in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan province that rely on rainfall and seasonal snowmelt rivers for irrigation.
“Many farmer families have already left, saying life has become too difficult. They move either to cities like Kabul, or even to neighbouring countries like Iran,” Tawakole said.
This year, the farmers in Raquel are entrusting the success of their crops to a new system of concrete irrigation canals that will divert water from a small snowmelt river 6km (3.7 miles) away to more than 200 hectares (494 acres) of farmland.
Similar structures are being constructed or rehabilitated throughout the country, as climate change-induced flooding, reduced snowfall and poor irrigation infrastructure make it increasingly difficult for farmers to find enough water.
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