Date farms in danger

Recently I took a tour of the hilly areas of the UAE looking for seasonal plants and birds. I noticed that date palm gardens that were raised during the late 1980s and 1990s were dying.

Upon enquiring, I learnt that the farms had failed due to shortage of water from underground sources, a problem which was later compounded by the presence of more salt in the water.

In the past, hill farms were irrigated through a natural system by taming the flow of rain water through a canal system developed along the sides and furrows of the rocks and crevices. The farmers could drain the rain water to the fields and sometimes store it in wells. But their crop fields and fruit orchards were of limited expanse.

Later, with the expansion of human settlement, power lines and roads, more people started practising hill-farming, leading to unchecked growth of agriculture for which both the government and the farmers were responsible.

The government should have assessed the quantity of underground water reserve and introduced a regulation to control the growth of farming in the hills. Water should have been rationed. Also, after every rainy season water table should have been checked.

The farmers should be provided with an efficient system of water utilisation. This will not only benefit the farmers but also save the local aquifers.