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Add to Preferred SourcesTea industry counts cost of natural disaster that claimed 200 lives and displaced more than 600,000 people last month.
Tea farmers in Sri Lanka are struggling to make ends meet after their land was destroyed by heavy floods and mudslides last month.
The floods, described by authorities as the worst to hit the country in more than a decade, killed more than 200 people and displaced more than 600,000 people from their homes. For many of the 400,000 small farmers who grow more than 70 percent of the country’s tea, the floods covered their tea bushes by up to five metres with mud and sludge, leading to the rotting of some roots.
Prabhat Bezbaruah, chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board, says almost 300 tonnes of tea and green leaf were destroyed by the floods, while damage to factories is still being assessed. He says the cost of the floods needs to be measured in humanitarian, and not financial, terms.
Losses that small farmers have incurred in terms of their lives and property are substantial, Bezbaruah says. Sri Lanka’s tea industry, which earns $1.3bn a year, has also seen a decrease in supply after the floods.
Last year, monsoon rains caused flooding and landslides that killed more than 100 people.
Source: Aljazeera. Read full article.
26 June, 2017