Islamabad (3 September 2022): Unprecedented floods have devastated 4.5 million acres of standing kharif crop and have washed away 0.74 million livestock in Pakistan. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Pakistan, foreseeing a difficult situation ahead, convened a meeting of development partners working in the agricultural sector to raise awareness on the need to support livestock sector immediately through vaccination campaigns and provision of feed and to support farmers for the Rabi season.

Representatives from USAID, World Food Programme, IFAD, European Union, World Bank, British High Commission, Australian High Commission and others attended the meeting. Main objective of the meeting was to inform the partners about short and medium term impacts of the floods on the agriculture sector.
    
The damages to upcoming Rabi crop from standing water in the fields, accessibility and availability of the seeds and fertilizers, possible disease outbreak in the livestock fear the agricultural experts.

Significant reduction in crop production of kharif crops is expected mainly for cotton, rice, chilies, vegetables, tomato, onion and dates; the worst might occur if farmers miss the Rabi season. So far, the impact of the reduction in the Kharif crops such as tomatoes and onions on prices has been clearly seen. In fact tomato price increased by 88.3% and onion price by 102.8% during July and August (as per Government of Pakistan statistics). The government has decided to import 108,950 tons of tomato and 533,730 tons of onion, of which 19,799 tons of tomato and 31,092 tons of onion have been already imported (as of 8 September 2022). These increases in prices are on top of the general food inflation that is happening in the country and which according to the CPI was around 30% in August. These factors may result in increased food insecurity in the country.

FAO Representative in Pakistan, Florence Rolle informed that in 2010 water remained for 2 months in the field. If this is the case again, the window for preparing the land and sowing will be short and good plans have to be in place for that.

FAO, under its emergency response, is starting vaccination of livestock and provision of fodder in some flood-affected districts of Sindh and Baluchistan so that farmers keep their main livelihood assets.

In conclusion it was agreed that FAO would provide development partners generic technical specifications for procurement of vaccines and feed in order to facilitate relief efforts by the implementing partners and ensure quality of the response. The importance of coordination at the district level was also stressed.