Rains cause minor damage to rice, sugarcane crops

Heavy monsoon rains in Sindh have caused only minor damage to the sugarcane and rice crops, officials said on Tuesday, though weeks of heavy downpour have already destroyed about 13 percent of the cotton crop. The floods have made about 280,000 homeless, and ruined crops over 1.7 million acres of land in Sindh, where the cotton crop has been hit the hardest, with an estimated loss of up to two million bales.
Officials said the recent floods have damaged or destroyed rice crops in a few districts of Sindh, but the country still expects a bumper crop of up to 6.5 million tonnes, thanks to timely rains in Punjab, the country's main agricultural province. "At this point, we are estimating that roughly 15 percent of the rice crop in Sindh has been damaged," said Taufiq Ahmed Khan, vice chairman of the Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan (REAP).
"But any further rains next week may increase the losses." Sindh was expected to produce about 2 million tonnes of milled rice this year.The world's fifth largest rice exporter, Pakistan is hoping to export up to 4.5 million tonnes of rice in the 2011/12 fiscal year, and Khan said that target was still "very much" achievable.
Rice exports fell to 3.7 million tonnes in the 2010/11 year, after floods in summer 2010. The floods also caused little damage to the sugarcane crop in the Badin and Thatta districts of Sindh, which account for about 22 percent of Pakistan's total sugarcane output.
"The rains, in fact, have proven to be a blessing in disguise for sugarcane as they killed pyrilla insect, which was threatening to cause a bigger damage in many areas," Ibrahim Mughal, president of Agri Forum Pakistan, a national farmer association, told Reuters. Mughal estimated output from the 2011/12 crop, to be harvested in November, at over 4.5 million tonnes. If that is achieved, the country will not need to import any sugar next year. Pakistan produced 4.1 million tonnes of refined sugar in 2010/11 and sugar officials had said this year that country had sufficient stocks to meet domestic demand until the next harvest in November.
Pakistan had to import about 1.2 million tonnes of sugar last year after production from the 2009/10 crop fell to nearly 3.1 million tonnes when many farmers switched to more profitable crops. Initial estimates have put cotton losses at up to 2 million bales of 170 kg (378.8lb), but the final figure is not expected before October.