Heavy rains soaked fields in Chiayi and Yunlin counties for more than 10 hours on Monday, causing estimated losses of NT$18 million (US$646,714) in Chiayi County and NT$8.57 million in Yunlin County.
Heavy losses were reported for agricultural products such as peanuts, watermelons and corn, Wu Fang-ming (吳芳銘), director of the Yunlin Department of Agriculture, said yesterday.
Peanut growers stand to lose the most, with more than 490 hectares, or 10 percent of all peanut fields in the county, affected, Wu said.
Peanut growers are looking at NT$4.66 million in losses, almost half the agricultural losses sustained by the county, Wu added.
One farmer, surnamed Tsai (蔡), told reporters that his peanut plants had just started sprouting when a southwestern monsoon and tropical depression hit.
The fields’ draining mechanism was rendered useless because the rain was falling too heavily and nothing could be done, Tsai said.
The roots of the peanut plants have rotted from being soaked in water for long periods and the only option now is to resow the fields, Tsai said.
The overhead for resowing every fen of land, or 969.92m2, is expected to be NT$3,000, without including costs such as labor, Tsai said.
Tsai urged the government to give affected farmers cash subsidies.
The Chiayi Department of Agriculture said that in its jurisdiction Singang (新港), Shueishang (水上) and Lioujiao (六腳) townships, as well as Taibao City (太保), were affected the most by the rain.
Agricultural products affected included vegetables, rice, corn and sugar cane, it said.
It had asked local farmers’ associations to report agricultural losses directly to the Council of Agriculture, it said, adding that it supported the idea of cash subsidies for farmers, as the area affected by the heavy rainfall was extensive.
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