“We will be unable to provide food to our people.” IMO Important to understand the full and lasting consequence of damaging weather effects upon a population over the months and years ahead, as extreme weather becomes more frequent and will result greater damage to infrastructure and food production.
"Even before the floods, some 38 million Pakistanis, more than 16% of the population, were living in moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they were uncertain about being able to obtain food or at times have outright gone without eating, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly 18% of children were acutely malnourished. The blow to the food supply and incomes will tip those populations deeper into hunger, U.N. agencies have warned. The U.N.’s World Food Program has so far delivered food to 600,000 flood survivors.
Iqbal, the planning minister, said Sindh province is the country’s biggest producer of vegetables for domestic markets. Those crops were lost, along with families’ personal stores of grains for themselves and feed for their livestock. “So, therefore we have a real food security challenge at hand,” he said. On the ground in Sukkur, another hard-hit district neighboring Khairpur, the local agricultural director Rasool Bux Junejo fears the worst. Farmers won’t be able to grow wheat or other key crops like sunflowers and mustard. “That will be a huge loss in the coming months. If you ask me as an agriculture worker, I foresee famine, God forbid,” he said. “We will be unable to provide food to our people.”
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