In Pakistan’s Punjab farmlands, cows and buffaloes once sustained families by providing milk.
Today, many of those animals have been sold to finance solar panels, which are transforming agriculture across Pakistan’s most populous province.
Farmers are increasingly turning away from diesel and the unreliable national power grid, instead using solar energy to run tube wells that draw groundwater for their fields.
The shift has provided cheap, uninterrupted access to irrigation and reduced dependence on costly fuel.
But it has also coincided with a sharp decline in Punjab’s already-stressed water tables, according to government documents reviewed by Reuters.
Karamat Ali, a 61-year-old rice farmer in Punjab, sold about a dozen bovines earlier this year and used the proceeds to buy panels.
With the electricity they generate, he powers a motorised pump that irrigates his rice fields. “Water supply to my paddy feed is smoother than before,” he said.
Interviews with farmers and analysts suggest that the growing adoption of solar-powered tube wells has made it possible to irrigate crops more frequently, including several times a day through pulse irrigation.
This practice, while boosting yields, is also accelerating the depletion of groundwater.
Between 2023 and 2025, the area under rice cultivation in Pakistan expanded by 30 per cent, according to US department of agriculture data.
At the same time, land planted with maize, a less water-intensive crop, fell by 10 per cent.
No official figures exist on the number of tube wells in the country, as they do not require registration.
Still, analysts estimate that around 400,000 previously grid-powered wells have switched to solar in the past three years, while farmers have purchased another 250,000.
That suggests some 650,000 wells across Pakistan now run on solar energy.
Energy economist Ammar Habib, an adviser to the power ministry, said the transition is expected to cause a 45 per cent fall in grid electricity consumption by the agriculture sector between 2023 and 2025.
The boom has been fuelled by falling solar prices, triggered by heavy panel production in China, and higher power tariffs introduced in Pakistan under an International Monetary Fund bailout.
The global cost of solar modules has collapsed by 80 per cent since 2017, spurring similar trends from Brazil to Iraq.
Punjab’s irrigation department has mapped a worrying picture of groundwater depletion.
As of 2024, water tables had fallen below 60 feet in 6.6 per cent of the province, a threshold marked as critical by authorities.
That represents a 25 per cent rise in just four years, with the deepest pockets, beyond 80 feet, more than doubling in the same period.
Pakistan’s power minister Awais Leghari rejected suggestions that solar pumps were depleting groundwater, insisting farmers were using the same amount of water as before, simply replacing diesel with solar.
However, the minister did not respond to evidence of increased irrigation and the expansion of rice cultivation.
Punjab irrigation minister Muhammad Kazim Pirzada admitted the panels were both “good for the environment” and contributing to falling water tables.
The government has begun pilot aquifer recharge projects at more than 40 sites and is reviving colonial-era irrigation infrastructure such as the Ravi Siphon to stabilise river flows.
Officials also say recent flooding may have replenished some depleted areas.
For many farmers, though, the long-term risks are outweighed by the immediate benefits.
Mohammad Naseem, 61, said he had saved about 2 million rupees in power costs since installing panels four years ago, equivalent to more than four times Pakistan’s per capita GDP.
The ability to irrigate freely has added between 400 and 600 kilograms of rice to his annual harvest and improved crop quality, fetching better prices. “I wash it with water. I sleep near it,” he said, describing how he dismantles his panels each night to protect them from theft.
Even subsistence farmers are striving to go solar. Some pool resources to purchase panels as communal property.
Haji Allah Rakha, 80, owns 16 panels that he shares with two other families. “They contribute, and we all benefit,” he said.
Solar merchants in Lahore describe panels being shared, rented and moved like tractors. Farmers often sell land, jewellery or take loans to afford them, with the investment paying back in just a few months.
But scientists warn that without stronger governance, the spread of solar will deepen Punjab’s water crisis.
Environmental expert Imran Saqib Khalid said Pakistan still lacks comprehensive mapping of wells or real-time monitoring of water extraction.
“The solar push lacks any method to the madness,” he said. “In the long run, this will have an impact on cropping intensities and the types of crops we can grow, which in turn will impact our food security.”