China’s 12 May earthquake has cost Sichuan’s agricultural sector US$6bn in damage and severely affected over 30m people in rural communities, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates.
Thousands of hectares of farmland were devastated by the disaster, millions of houses, warehouses and pieces of machinery destroyed, and thousands of greenhouses collapsed causing severe losses of vegetable crops, a recent FAO assessment mission found.
Current pesticide and fertiliser shortages are also jeopardising future food production, it said. “In addition to the human tragedy caused by the disaster – mainly the loss of family members – many rural communities in Sichuan province have lost their means to produce food and create income. It will probably take three to five years to rebuild the agricultural sector in Sichuan,” Rajendra Aryal, of FAO, told chinaview.cn.
Nevertheless, China’s kiwifruit marketing association told Fruitnet that a bumper Sichuan kiwifruit crop would still be harvested this year. And one company said it would continue to export fruit to international markets as normal, despite the devastating impact the earthquake has had on its growers and facilities.
“The mortality rate among our growers is staggering and over 90 per cent of farmers’ homes were destroyed,” Wang Hong, general manager of Sichuan Yuwang Ecology Group told Fruitnet.
“Our factory collapsed. All the equipment and materials were damaged. Our kiwifruit bases were left in chaos,” he said.
“But we set up a voluntary team to investigate the damage and encouraged the farmers to go back to work, since we believe that keeping going is crucial to post-disaster reconstruction. And we have already had our first kiwifruit order from Holland,” he added.
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