Flood recovery costs for Pakistan's vital agriculture sector and farmers could be in the billions of dollars, as a farmers association said half a million tonnes each of wheat and sugar had been destroyed, Reuters reported Agriculture is the mainstay of Pakistan's fragile economy, while wheat markets are on edge about crop losses after a drought in the major exporting Black Sea region sent prices to a near two-year high last week. "The devastation to crops is immense. I think it's safe to say it will take some billions of dollars to recover. I am referring to livelihood for agriculture and farming to get back in shape," U.N. humanitarian operations spokesman Maurizio Giuliano told Reuters on Thursday. The Finance Ministry said this week the floods would hit growth and this year's gross domestic product growth target of 4.5 percent would be missed, though it was not clear by how much. [ID:nSGE67909D]. Growth was 4.1 percent in the last fiscal year. The floods, triggered by unusually heavy monsoon rain, have scoured the Indus river basin, killing more than 1,600 people, forcing 2 million from their homes and disrupting the lives of about 14 million people, or 8 percent of the population. Farmers have been reluctant to leave flooded areas. Some of those who do walk neck-deep in water pulling their buffalos to reach safety. "I was growing sugar cane and cotton. Everything is lost. Six to seven feet water is covering my fields," said Abdul Ghani Soomro, a farmer in southern Sindh province. "It will take another six months for that water to dry, maybe even more. I have lost not only my standing crop, but my whole year is wasted." Ibrahim Mughal, president of a national farmers' association, estimated that up to 500,000 tonnes of wheat stocked with farmers has been washed away in Pakistan, Asia's third-largest wheat producer. A Food Ministry official said up to 600,000 tonnes of wheat stocks had been damaged or destroyed in the flood. Pakistan, Asia's third-largest wheat producer, harvested 23.80 million tonnes of wheat in the 2009/10 crop, as well as a carryover stock of 4.22 million tonnes, and was expected to export this year after a ban on exports last year. Pakistan, the world's fourth biggest cotton producer, has also seen that commodity hit hard, with up to 2 million bales of destroyed, industry officials said, out of an expected crop of 14 million bales in the 2010/11 season. Output of refined sugar could fall by 500,000 tonnes because of damage to the crop, farmers' association official Mughal said. On damage to the rice crop, the farmers' association put the losses at about 200,000 tonnes of rice, an estimate also supported by a Singapore-based trading company. "We are estimating around 200,000 to 300,000 tonnes of rice lost in these floods which will be reflected in Pakistan's exports," said the head of rice business at an international trading company in Singapore.
