Farmers Need Protection From Flashflood Losses

Farmers Need Protection From Flashflood Losses

This has been a bad crop year so far with natural calamities causing immense losses to the country’s main rice crops – Boro and Aman. Flashfloods in the northeastern backswamp that struck unusually early in the month of March first caused a major blow to the Boro, only rice crop the Haor farmers grow in a year. That loss of crops forced the government to continousely provide succour to nearly half a million people in complete distress in six northeastern districts. Then came the attacks of deadly fungi in the form of rice blast and finally a devastating deluge in July-August period damaging Aman seedlings in six lakh hectares of lands. In most conservative estimate, country’s farmers lost over two million metric tones of rice this year in flashflood, flood and blast, forcing the government to go to international market for importing rice, first time in six years.

Thanks to government’s policy supports and free distribution of key agro-input among the flood-hit farmers that most of the Aman growers put in best efforts and managed to recoup the early flood loss but yet the output is projected to be little less than the usual production target.