{"book":"adl0957","page":62,"text":"41\nAgricultural Development in Afghanistan.\nAt present there are vast plans for the agricultural develop-\nment of the country, the most important of these being the Hel-\nmand Valley Project. The valleys of the north-east are fertile\nand capable of high productivity, but the south-west, with its\ngreat areas of uncultivated or occasionally cultivated land, offers\nthe greatest possibilities for future development. This region is\nprimarily drained by the Helmand River and its system of tribut-\naries. The Helmand Valley is an inland basin, cut off from the\nsea on all sides by a ring of mountains. The watershed covers a\nlarge area, draining the southern slopes of the high Hindukush\nmountains. The Helmand is the perennial source of considerable\nsize; the low flow during the summer months rarely goes below\n1,500 to 2,000 cfs. (42 to 56 cubic meters per sec.).\n\nThe Helmand empties into the Hamun-i-Helmand, a series\nof shallow lakes in the south-western corner of the country, along\nthe Iranian border. Also discharging into the lakes are several\nother smaller streams which drain the southwestern part of the\ncountry, viz., the Adraskand, Farah, Khuspas, Khash Rud and Dor\nRud. These streams may have flood discharges of considerable\nmagnitude, but the annual flow is largely taken for upstream\nirrigation, and in general they are intermittent streams; the\nlower reaches are usually dry during a large part of the year.\n\nThere is evidence that Hamun-i-Helmand was once of very\nmuch greater extent. In the past ages, the rivers discharging into\nthis great inland sea carried large quantites of sediments which\nwere deposited on the lake floor during a long period of time.\nWith change of climate the sea receded, exposing a broad flat\nterrain of deep silt. That portion of this region which lies in\nAfghanistan is known as Chakhansur. This area has probably\nbeen cultivated to a greater or lesser extent since the dawn of","chars":1925,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00062.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/62","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/62","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}