Afghanistan

The last available census-based inventory of irrigated areas dates back to 1967, giving a total of 2 385 290 ha [AF01]. However, land-cover maps, recently produced through the collaborative efforts of FAO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Afghan Geodesy and Cartography Office (Kabul), indicate that the extent of irrigated areas has not changed much in the last 35 years. About 190 000 ha are classified as intensively irrigated (two crops, rice–wheat), about 1 370 000 ha as cropped and irrigated at least once a year, and about 1 650 000 ha as irrigated occasionally (every two or three years) [AF02]. Area equipped for irrigation was computed on a district level based on the recently produced land-cover map [AF02] as the sum of areas classified as intensively or occasionally irrigated. This resulted in a total AEI of 3 199 070 ha.The irrigated areas by province are shown in the Table below. The irrigated areas both by province and by district can be downloaded as Afghanistan irrigation areas in PDF or Afghanistan irrigation areas in Excel (two sheets).

The irrigated areas were derived from land-cover maps, recently produced through the collaborative efforts of FAO, the United Nations Development Programme and the Afghan Geodesy and Cartography Office Kabul [AF02].

The census-based inventory related to year 1967 [AF01] listed areas irrigated from streams, canals, springs, kharezes and wells for each province. The total area irrigated with groundwater according to this inventory was 367 240 ha (15.4 percent) while area irrigated with surface water was 2 018 050 ha. The numbers found in this inventory agree very well with statistics reported in a more recent publication [AF03]. Therefore we used this inventory to compute the percentage of area irrigated with groundwater for each province. Total area equipped for irrigation with groundwater computed this way was 576 387 ha (18 percent of total AEI). AAI per region was derived from a report referring to season 2001/2002 [AF04]. Total AAI was 1 731 784 ha, of which 1 292 025 ha were used for one irrigated crop and 439 759 ha were under irrigated double-cropping.

References

[AF01]: Ministry of Water and Power. 1967. Irrigated areas per province and per source. Table available in the AQUASTAT library.
[AF02]: Afghanistan Information Management Service (AIMS), FAO. 2003. Land cover of Afghanistan (1993). http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/metadata.show?id=1289, 30/03/2012.
[AF03]: Qureshi, A.S. 2002. Water resources management in Afghanistan: the issues and options. Working Paper 49, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Colombo, Sri Lanka, http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org/Publications/Working\_Papers/index.aspx, 12/08/2009.
[AF04]: Maletta, H. and Favre, R. 2003. Agriculture and food production in post-war Afghanistan - a report on the winter agricultural survey 2002-2003. Food, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Information Management and Policy Unit (FAAHM) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry of Afghanistan and FAO, Office Kabul, Kabul, Afghanistan, http://www.fao.org/3/ae407e/ae407e00.htm, 12/08/2009.