Located on the extreme southern edge of Punjab, Rahim Yar Khan is a geographically diverse district. It is spread across a vast desert and enormous riverine area with three canals that water its farmlands. This natural endowment gives it enormous tapped and untapped potential for agricultural and livestock production.

The district has benefitted a great deal from this natural gift. It is known for the finest quality cotton. It has helped Pakistan meet its milk and meat requirement. It is now sustaining the sugar industry by producing high-yield sugar cane.

The success, however, has its flipside. The district morphed from being a cotton champion to the sugar industry’s sustainer. It is now persistently blamed for failing cotton crop and hurting textiles at a most critical juncture of our economic journey.

For the last one and a half decade, the district is known, at least in the agricultural sense, for jettisoning cotton and embracing sugar cane. The trend seems irreversible at least for now. The sugar industry not only led the change but also cemented its success both at policy and commercial levels to an extent that a reversal looks almost impossible.

The commercial success of the sugar industry has been so comprehensive that traditional landlords are now sugar mill owners as well

It has helped farmers improve seed. It has helped them lease out vast tracts of land at double the normal rate. It has helped farmers introduce latest machines and techniques. Most importantly, the cut-to-crush time has gone down to less than 24 hours, securing huge financial benefit in the process.

At the policy level, sugar cane production has been incentivised with a two-pronged strategy: steadily increasing the minimum indicative price and ensuring ample water for this water-guzzling crop. The five-year acreage chart further clarifies the situation. As per the data of the Punjab Crop Reporting Service, the area under cultivation of sugar cane increased from 310,000 acres in 2014-15 to 430,000 acres this year. In 2017-18, it touched 477,000 acres before sliding down a bit subsequently. Its production rose from 10.56 million tonnes to 13.2m tonnes in the same period. Six sugar mills — two plants of JDW, RYK Group, Hamza, Ittehad and Gulf — in the district led and rode the cane bandwagon.

Fed from the Panjnad barrage, supply data shows how water helped ensure the cane success in Rahim Yar Khan. Three canals — Panjnad, Abbasia and Abbasia Link — irrigate over 1.5m acres in the district that is mainly a brackish aquifer although there are a few sweet water pockets.

Their joint allocation (both for Kharif and Rabi) as per the Irrigation Department data is 5.05m acres feet (maf) a year. The district received 6.96maf in 2014-15, 7.11maf in 2015-16, 5.96maf in 2016-17, 4.99maf in 2017-18, 6.67maf in 2018-19 and 6.27maf last year. During these years, the province has suffered up to 40 per cent seasonal shortages. Yet water supplies to Rahim Yar Khan remained impervious to these troubles mainly because of flood supplies during the monsoon.

The commercial success of the sugar industry was so comprehensive that traditional landlords, including many branches of the Makhdoom family, are now sugar mill owners as well. New entrants like Chaudhry Munir and Jahangir Khan Tareen earned a place in national politics on the back of their successes in the sugar industry.

The decline of cotton happened alongside the rise of sugar. During the period mentioned above, cotton acreage dropped from 511,000 acres to 474,000. The dip was sharp in 2017-18 when its acreage dropped to 389,000 acres. Its production came down from 743,000 bales to 621,000 bales during the same period. Cotton has had many problems of its own. It was not the only crop rolled over by sugar cane: many mango orchards that dotted the district also lost their battle to cane.

Apart from the cotton-cane battle, the district has been a livestock success story because of rangelands in the Indus catchment. Livestock is a result of the nomadic lifestyle of the Cholistan tribes, which also feeds it. As temperatures start rising in the desert, many tribes and their huge herds follow rains — feeding their animals along the way — to the river catchment. This is in addition to over 200 cattle farms (of more than 50 animals) and over 400 buffalo farms and individual livestock farming in the district.

Eleven districts in South Punjab meet 60pc beef and meat requirements of the province. Rahim Yar Khan alone contributes 12-14pc of the supply chain, according to data released by the Livestock Department.

As for milk production, the district produces over 500,000 litres daily and is a major supplier to multinational corporations that sell milk to consumers. Of late, low fat and more nutritious camel milk has carved out a niche market for itself, thanks to some local initiatives by the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences that connect producers to major city markets.

The district has historically been dominated by the Makhdooms, Qureshis, Legharis and Rais families. It has also been helped a lot by the United Arab Emirates whose ruler, the late Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, started making yearly sojourn to the area to hunt houbara bustard and deer in the 1960s and ’70s. He and his sons helped build roads, hospitals, schools and colleges in the area that helped achieve close to a 40pc literacy rate in a predominantly rural district.

Of late though their interest seems to be waning, but the infrastructure investment in the area still reflects the attention it once received from the Arab world.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, December 7th, 2020