Salam Buzdar and Frank van Steenbergen
When most people think of agriculture in Pishin (Balochistan, Pakistan), fruit orchards usually come to mind—acres of apple, grape, and apricot trees stretching across the district, along with some almond groves. Because these fruit trees have deep, sturdy root systems, rodents rarely pose a major threat to them. However, in pockets where farmers cultivate vegetables and field crops like melon and watermelon (kharboza and tarbooz), the story is completely different. The tender roots and ground-level fruits of melons make them uniquely vulnerable, and during a recent fact finding, we saw firsthand the hidden toll rodents are taking right as the fruits start to set and grow.
While walking through the melon patches, a grower showed how rodents chew directly into the roots below ground. By severing the plant’s main nutrient line, the crop wilts almost overnight before the pests move on to feed on the growing melon fruits. When we brought this up with local landowners and farmers, many brushed it off at first, assuming rodents couldn’t thrive in Pishin due to our hard soil. But looking closely at the fields, sandy patches and loose soils within these agricultural areas give rodents ideal conditions to dig burrows and spread without much notice.
We asked several farmers and landowners what steps they actually take to get rid of these pests, and their responses revealed just how limited local control methods are. Most farmers simply destroy or collapse the burrow holes they come across in the field. While this might temporarily force the rodents to move elsewhere, it does nothing to affect the population. One farmer mentioned that when they prepare the land for the next crop cycle, deep ploughing with a heavy tractor helps disturb and clear out the burrows, which offers some seasonal relief, but during the active growing season, farmers are essentially left without a real defense.
If more, further investigations revealed that despite substantial damage to crops like melon, rodent management is totally off- the radar. Neither government extension offices nor non-governmental organizations are currently conducting structured work or research on rodent control in the area. The only active interventions come from commercial pesticide agencies, whose approach relies entirely on selling heavy chemical treatments. Yet the answer is in managing the rodent population is in reducing access to shelter and easy food: applying harsh toxics, is neither harmless nor effective. Synthetic rodenticides should only come in as a last resort, if at all, if all ecological options are applied.
