Floods deal costly blow to South Asia farmers

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Floods that inundated millions of acres of farmland in South Asia have threatened an entire season's crop in some areas, raising fears of food shortages in a costly hit to farm-dependent economies, analysts say.

The floods in India, Bangladesh and Nepal have killed nearly 1,900 people since June and displaced at least 28 million, with the past two weeks causing the worst damage.
Initial estimates say that regional losses from destroyed farms, houses and infrastructure are well above 100 million dollars for the past two weeks, and at least 320 million dollars for India alone since June 1.

The impact on farmers has been severe. An agriculture expert said an entire season's crop, dominated by rice, in the four most heavily inundated northern districts of India's Bihar state was likely to be lost.

"When you have that kind of water, that depth of water, standing for days together, the loss is likely to be substantial," said Mangala Rai, director of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

"Rice submergence tolerance could be a day or two but not for more days."
The federal government has put damage to crops and property in Bihar at 38 million dollars, but local officials in the state, which was worst-hit with 12 million people affected, estimated the figure at almost twice that.

Some 1.1 million hectares (6.7 million acres) of farmland was inundated in the state, officials said.
The only positive point, according to Rai, was that in the longer term the flooded land would be soaked with nutrients, raising fertility.

Also raising the damage toll was the destruction of at least 30,000 homes while 44,000 more were partly damaged in Bihar, according to India's national disaster management agency.

Infrastructure also took a hit in impoverished Bihar with 1,260 kilometres (780 miles) of roads and dozens of bridges needing repairs estimated at about 40 million dollars, state relief coordinator R.K. Singh said.
In northern Uttar Pradesh state, half a million hectares of farmland were flooded, while northeast Assam, where more than half of the 6.7 million people who were displaced returned home this week, was even worse off.

"A total of about 9,291 houses were totally damaged or washed away in the floods that swept through a land area of 870,000 hectares," Bhumidhar Barman, Assam revenue and relief minister, told AFP.

Although damage was still being assessed, Assam's state government said it had spent five million dollars on its own relief effort.
Aid agencies say millions of dollars more are needed across South Asia for food and medicines.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, which saw 40 percent of its land inundated in the annual flooding, one scientist said the rice-growing nation might see its GDP growth rate hit.
Crops on 1.6 million acres of farmland have been completely or partially damaged, officials say, noting it was still too early to assess the scale of the potential losses.
"There is dim hope that this crop, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, could be recovered," said Hamid Mia, a scientist working in Bangladesh for the Manila-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).

"Since Bangladesh's economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, the floods would affect the GDP growth.
"It now seems impossible to attain the targeted seven percent GDP growth in this fiscal year."
The Bangladeshi government has appealed to its citizens and foreign donors to help in feeding the nine million people displaced by the floods. Some 300 people have died in the delta nation since the start of the monsoon, more than half in the last two weeks.

Further north, floods in the low-lying "bread basket" plains of mountainous Nepal could lead to food shortages later in the year, a senior official there said.
"We have only just started working on preliminary estimates for the amount of flood damage, but the cost is going to be massive," Pratap Kumar Pathak, a home ministry official, told AFP.

"Food security for those hit by the floods is going to be a challenge over the next few months."
The UN World Food Programme has said an estimated 1.5 million dollars will be needed to feed the worst-off among the more than 300,000 people affected by the flooding in Nepal.