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Drought and floods wipe out farms in Asia’s chilli capital | Climate Crisis News

Near Kunri, a southern Pakistani town known as the chili capital of Asia, 40-year-old farmer Leman Raj is rustling through dry trees in search of any bright red peppers that might still be alive. in his most destroyed crop.

“My crops were hit hard by the heat, then it started to rain, and the weather changed completely. Now, because of the heavy rains, we have suffered heavy crop damage, and this is what happened to the peppers,” he said, holding the dry, rotten plants. “All the peppers have rotted.”

Floods raging across Pakistan in August and September, due to years of high temperatures, have left chili farmers struggling to cope. In a country heavily dependent on agriculture, more extreme climate conditions are hitting rural economies hard, farmers and experts say, underscoring the vulnerability of groups South Asian populations to weather changes.

Officials have estimated flood damage at more than $40 billion.

Pakistan is ranked fourth in the world for chili production, with 150,000 acres (60,700 hectares) of farms producing 143,000 tons annually. Agriculture is the mainstay of Pakistan’s economy, making the country vulnerable to climate change.

Before floods, hot temperatures make it harder to grow peppers, requiring milder conditions.

“When I was a kid… the heat was never so intense. We used to have a bountiful crop, now the weather has gotten so hot and the rains are so scarce that our production is dwindling,” Raj said.

Attaullah Khan, director of the Arid Region Research Institute at the Agricultural Research Council of Pakistan, said heatwaves over the past three years have affected the growth of pepper plants in the region, causing curl diseases. leaves and stunted.

Now flooding poses a whole new set of challenges.

“Coming to climate change: how do we overcome that?” he say. “Planning has to be done on a very large scale. Four waterways that once carried [excess] water reaching the ocean must be revived. So we will have to make some very difficult decisions… But we have no choice.”

Many farmers said they were faced with difficult decisions.

When floods flooded his farm a few months ago, Kunri farmer Faisal Gill decided to sacrifice his cotton plants to try and save the pepper plants.

“We built dykes around the cotton fields and installed pumps, digging trenches during the chili crop to store water and pump it into the cotton fields because both crops are grown side by side,” says Gill.

Destroying the cotton saved him only 30 percent of his peppers, he said, but that was better than nothing.

At Kunri’s bustling wholesale chili market Mirch Mandi, this effect is also being felt. Despite piles of bright red peppers dotting the market, traders said the drop was huge compared to previous years.

“Last year, at this time, there used to be about 8,000 to 10,000 bags of chili peppers on the market,” said trader Raja Daim.

“This year, now you can see that there were only 2,000 bags here, and that was the first day of the week. he said.



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