Flooding in the west has damaged Cayo’s agricultural sector – Love FM

The ministries of disaster risk management and agriculture have submitted a preliminary report on the damage caused to the agricultural sector in the west. The weekend flooding caused many farmers to move their cattle and cattle to higher ground. Although there was no significant loss of animals, many farmers in Cayo District lost their crops due to high water. Disaster Risk Management Minister Orlando Habet explained that the GOB is able to access funds from a contingency fund to purchase supplies needed to help farmers who have been affected.

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management: “Much of the production of agricultural food products in the Spanish region of Lookout Cayo has been affected, in particular soybeans, black beans and kidney beans, as well as corn and some of them were already in the process of harvest had already started so when the rains came and the flooding increased some of them went under water some are still under water so maybe there would be some percentage that will still be able be harvested, but the spoilage started very quickly because they are soaked with water, they have to be put through a drying process which is also expensive, but also the cost of harvesting increases because the machinery, the harvester -thresher that normally harvests corn and beans will not be able to pick them up from the ground, so if they really want to get some of that product that is now in the ground, it will involve manual harvesting that i is very expensive and very inefficient. Often water seeps into the seeds and they begin to germinate before they can even be harvested. So there will be significant losses, but as the colonel mentioned, we would be able to make an estimate after the waters recede. However, the Minister of Agriculture has already deployed his teams from the Ministry of Agriculture to start doing the assessments where the water has started to recede and they can start doing some of those assessments.