KARACHI: Up to 80 per cent tomato farms in Sindh’s Badin wiped out as monsoon toll nears 1,000 deaths country-wide with big share of Punjab.
The Prime Minister has declared agricultural emergency as farm losses fuel fears of food inflation and supply disruptions.
The sight of arrays of withered tomato plants comes into view as soon as one arrives at a 50-acre farm in Sindh’s Badin district in southern Pakistan.
One farmer, Najma Habibullah, said will be forced to switch to more climate-resilient crops next season. Like other tomato farmers in Badin, she rues the effects of heavy monsoon rains that have damaged all the tomato crops her family cultivated this season.
According to the Sindh Rural Support Organization (SRSO), farmers in Badin grew about 15,000 acres of tomatoes between June 15 and Augyst 15 this year, of which 70 to 80 percent have been destroyed by rains and floods.
The devastation comes as Pakistan reels from monsoon flooding since June 26 that has killed 998 people nationwide, inundated 4,700 villages in Punjab and washed away crops and homes across the agricultural heartland. Alongside high river flows, Badin itself received 200 millimeters of rain this season — double its average — compounding the damage to vegetable crops.
“The normal rainfall remains limited to 100 (millimeters) which, if crossed, brings vulnerability,” SRSO District Manager Ahmed Khan Soomro said.
“The vegetable crop has been damaged very much, especially tomato. Tomato has vanished.”
Read more: Punjab Reports Over 33,000 Cases Of Various Diseases In Flood Areas
