Daily Times

The recent torrential rains and floods have wreaked havoc across the country, causing damages of Rs320.824 billion to agriculture and livestock alone.

The floods damaged standing crops including cotton, maize, sugarcane, oil seeds and seasonal pulses spreading over millions of hectares of land whereas the livestock sector also faced huge losses, a senior official of the Ministry of National Food Security and Research told APP.

According to the initial estimates over 800,000 big and small animals died due to floods in provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, he said,

The initial estimates showed that in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa major and minor crops including cotton, rice, maize, sugarcane and oil seeds standing over 14,397 acres were damaged.

The recent floods also damaged vegetable farms, fruits orchards and potato crop, besides destroying oil seeds crops and over 328 big and small animals, he added.

In KP Province, he said maize was cultivated over was 482,767 acres, about 4,794 acres damage by rains and flood, which was about 1%, adding that the financial losses due to damage of the maize crop were estimated at about Rs368.09 million.

Meanwhile, rice was cultivated over 40,029 acres area out of which 3,482 acres have been damaged due to the flooding which is about 6% of the total area and the production losses were about 39 ton which is equivalent to Rs11.81 million, he added.

He said that about 6% vegetables yield spreading over 938 acres out of 15,930 acres was damaged causing financial loss of around Rs145.28 million, adding that about 2% of the total area under orchard cover was also damaged with a accumulative financial losses equivalent to Rs5.35 million.

In Punjab cotton crop was cultivated over 3,670,000 acres, out of the total area standing crops over 30,340 acres damaged due the recent rains and floods, which was the 0.83% of total area, he added.

Meanwhile, Balochistan was another province which was badly affected due to floods as standing crops over 108,285 acres damaged and over 107,377 animals died, whereas 21,960 cares orchards, 14,882 acres of different vegetable also destroyed.

In Sindh, agriculture and livestock sectors losses were estimated at RsRs297.316 billion as cotton one of the largest crop of the province standing over thousands of hectares completely destroyed, he added. He further told that crops including cotton, date palm, sugarcane, chillies and onion standing over 2.8 million hectares damaged due to recent calamity.