Floods wipe out crops worth Rs85 billion

KARACHI: The ready to harvest major and minor crops, including cotton, paddy, chilly and vegetables worth almost Rs85 billion have been completely washed out by the rain and floods in Sindh, an official of Sindh Abadgar Board said on Saturday.
"Almost all the summer crops planted on 2.1 million acres of riverine land on two sides of the Indus River were ready for the harvest,” the president of Sindh Abadgar Board Abdul Majeed Nizamani told, adding that rains and floods wiped out the standing crops completely.
The average value of the washed out crops comes to around Rs40,000/acre, which brings the total cost to around Rs85 billion.
A part of the crops planted on mainstream agriculture lands in the province have also been impacted, the farmers added.
The farmers in the province grow cotton at an estimated area of 1.8 million acre, paddy at 1.8 to two million acres and sugarcane at an area of 400,000 to 450,000 acre.
Fodder is another notable summer crop, which farmers have cultivated on large area this season, Nizamani added.
According to a World Bank's study, 92 percent chilly of the country is produced by Sindh.
Nizamani further said a part of paddy crop on mainstream agriculture land has been impacted in lower parts of the province. On the contrary, "the same crop is plentiful in upper Sindh, as this part of the province has not received rains in that quantity,” he added.
The abadgar board president assumed a significant size of the crops, including cane and banana, would survive the floods, adding that, "Some 30-40 percent cane crop and a portion of banana would be impacted.”
Only in Ghotki district, farmers have planted cotton, chilly, cane, vegetables and other crops at an area of 30,000 acre riverine land. "Except cane, which was grown at an area of 4,000 acre, all the crops on the district's reverine land have been destroyed completely," he said. Similar, is the case in Sukkur, Noshero Feroz and Mithari districts.
Muhammad Javed, a farmer from Shikarpur district, said some five to 10 percent paddy crop has been impacted in Shikarpur and surrounding areas due to recent rains.
Gulab Shah, a farmer from Thatta district, said, "Hundred percent crops planted on riverine area of Thatta have been destroyed by the floods."
Farmers in the area have mainly grown banana, betel leaf, papaya, paddy, and vegetables, including bottle gourd, cucumber, and chilly. Banana and betel leaves were planted at 5,000-6,000 acre of riverine land and almost all the crops on the land have been lost.
He said the cane crop, which is otherwise a flood fighting crop, has also been destroyed in the area, "It gets destroyed once water runs over and above the heights of the crop."
Haji Shahjahan, the president of Karachi's wholesale market of vegetables and fruits association at Super Highway, said the market is not receiving vegetables from the areas which received floods.
At the outset of the floods in Sindh, the market has witnessed shortage of vegetables, including bottle gourd, cucumber, and ridge gourd and there prices have shot to Rs70-80 per kilogram.
Resumption of supply of such vegetables in the last 10-12 days from other parts of the country has brought down the prices to Rs20-25 per kilogram. At present, the market receives these vegetables from Balochistan and some unaffected parts of Sindh.