“Restart from zero”: Indian farmers struck by floods look at swelling losses | Agriculture

After having made several economic successes in his house, Gurvinder Singh, a 47 -year -old farmer in Gurdaspur, in the state of Punjab in India, contracted a million rupees ($ 11,000) of a private lender to marry his eldest daughter. He saved part of this and used it to sow 3 acres (1.2 hectares) of Paddy.

He placed his bet on the high -efficiency pearl variety of aromatic basmati rice. A good sale would have given him a gain of almost 1 million rupees per acre ($ 11,400 per 0.4 hectares).

But now, Paddy’s grains in Singh pearls are immersed in flood waters, buried under layers of earth and sediment.

“I cannot afford this shocking flood at this time of my life. We are ruined,” Singh told Al Jazeera. “This year’s harvest was supposed to cover our debts. But this field is a lake now, and I don’t know how I’m going to start again. “

Singh also had to temporarily leave his home, as well as his wife and two children, after the devastating floods hit their village earlier this month. “What will I go back?” he wondered.

“A lasting repercussion”

The states of northern India were in shock under the impact of heavy monsoon rains, sudden floods and swollen rivers that have overwhelmed entire villages and thousands of hectares of agricultural land.

In Punjab, where more than 35% of the population is based on agriculture, the situation is particularly dark. Here, farmers have faced the worst floods in the past four decades, with large expanses of flooded rice fields a few weeks before harvest. The state cultivates rice in almost two thirds of its total geographic area.

Gurdaspur, where Singh lives with his family, was among the worst districts struck by the floods of a region that borders three overflowing rivers – delighted, Beas and Sutlej – following strong precipitation in the state of Jammu and cashmere and the state of Himachal Pradesh.

At least 51 people died due to floods in Punjab and 400,000 more people were moved.

Singh’s Paddy’s field contributes to $ 6 billion in India Basmati exports. Punjab alone represents 40% of total production. On the other side of the border, Pakistan’s Punjab province, also overwhelmed in floods, represents 90% of the country’s Basmati production, generating nearly $ 900 million.

The initial official estimates have put the complete loss of crops in more than 450,000 acres (182,100 hectares) – almost the region of Mauritius – of Punjab agricultural land in India. Independent agricultural economists have told Al Jazeera that the final impact of the floods could be five times higher than the official estimate.

“The harvest is completely spoiled, their machine is overwhelmed and the farmers’ houses have taken away,” said Lakhwinder Singh, director of studies at the Center for Development Economics and Innovations at Punjabi University based in Patiala.

“Punjab farmers must restart from scratch. They would require a lot of support and investment from the government,” Singh told Al Jazeera.

Until now, the Punjab government – Régi by the AAM AADMI Party (AAP), which is nationally in opposition to the Bharatiya Janata party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi – announced an allowance of 20,000 Indian rupees ($ 230) to farmers who have lost their cultures. But it can be too little to cope with the monumental challenges that await us to farmers, said Singh.

Almost 6% of this basmati rice is shipped to the United States, which threw a 50% rate on New Delhi. India has traditionally been a protectionist towards its agricultural sector, which employs half of the population of India (the largest in the world) – a collision point in the commercial negotiations with the administration of the American president Donald Trump.

Singh warned the government of India against the use of the impact of floods as a lever to liberalize policy to import food grains. “The government should not push farmers under the bus to reduce prices and get an agreement with Trump,” he said. “These punjab floods may have a lasting impact on the future of the agricultural economy.”

‘All we have is water’

The immediate and intimidating challenge for Punjab farmers will be to get rid of the soil and the sediments that have settled on their agricultural land, said experts in agriculture.

Indra Shekhar Singh, an agricultural policy analyst, said that the extent of damage could only be determined after the water is removed from the fields. “There is excessive sedimentation and mud on farmers’ fields,” he told Al Jazeera. “Another problem is to level up, which is another cost, and preparing it for the next season.”

In India, the cultivation of the monsoon or the “kharif” represents around 80% of the total production of rice, which is harvested from the end of September to October. Now, say that experts, Punjab farmers run against time to prepare their fields for the harvest of the next season, winter wheat, which must start in early November to avoid loss of yield.

“Paddy Fields takes the worst shot in the floods,” said Shekhar Singh. “Unless there is a miracle, even the conservative figures suggest strong losses for farmers.

In addition to new flood waters that can affect standing crops, Shekhar Singh said farmers were also looking at a critical nutritional crisis for the Rabi season.

Farmers of India count on urea, containing approximately 46% nitrogen, as the main fertilizer; The country is also the world’s largest importer in urea. But the shares decrease: Urea shares increased from 8.64 million tonnes in August 2024 to 3.71 million tonnes in August this year.

This monsoon has also seen panic buying urea by farmers in several Indian states. Now, the floods have struck in the middle of an underlying fear that fertilizers could fail for the next Rabi sowing. There was also a global increase in urea prices, going from $ 400 per ton in May 2025 to $ 530 per tonne in September.

“This would lead to black marketing for fertilizers in impacted states such as Punjab, and adds to an existing problem of false circulation of pesticides,” added Shekhar Singh.

Singh of Punjabi University said that farmers are faced with an “prolonged economic crisis for them who will continue in the coming months”.

Meanwhile, Singh, Gurdaspur farmer from Punjab, is thinking about what the future has in store for his family.

He had married his daughter earlier this year to another farmer from Amritsar, one of the largest cities in Punjab which borders Pakistan. Their agricultural land is also immersed.

“I cannot travel to visit them even when we suffer from the same disease,” he said, before thinking about the tragedies faced with a region where two sides of a tense border are struggling with the same crisis.

“We were ready to fight a war for these rivers,” said Singh, referring to hostilities between India and Pakistan earlier this year after a cashmere attack administered by the Indians killed 26 civilians. India had suspended the Industry Water Treaty, which distributes the six rivers between nuclear arms neighbors, in response – a decision that Pakistan described as an “act of war”.

“All we have now is water,” said Singh.