Asian farmers drilling millions of pump-operated wells in an ever-deeper search for water are threatening to suck the continent's underground reserves dry, a science magazine warned on Wednesday. "This little-heralded crisis is repeating itself across Asia and could cause widespread famine in the decades to come," London-based New Scientist said in a report on scientists' findings at a recent water conference in Sweden. The worst affected country is India. There, small farmers have abandoned traditional shallow wells where bullocks draw water in leather buckets to drill 21 million tube wells hundreds of metres (yards) below the surface using technology adapted from the oil industry, the magazine said. Another million wells a year are coming into operation in India to irrigate rice, sugar cane and alfalfa round-the-clock. While the $600 pumps have brought short-term prosperity to many and helped make India a major rice exporter in less than a generation, future implications are dire, New Scientist said. "So much water is being drawn from underground reserves that they, and the pumps they feed, are running dry, turning fields that have been fecund for generations into desert," it said. --MORE 2137 Local Time 1837 GMT
