Sunday, August 17, 2014

Floods submerge cane fields in North India

Ratnajyoti Dutta in Reuters: Heavy monsoon rains in India have caused flooding in the country's main sugar producing state Uttar Pradesh, but the full extent of any damage to the crop will not be known until floodwaters recede.

There were apprehensions that a slow start to India's monsoon season would trim cane output in the world's second biggest sugar producing nation, but a late revival in rains resulted in higher acreage being planted. However, fresh floods in North India have now raised fears of damage to the cane crop.

...According to the latest assessment of the Indian Sugar Mills Association, the country's sugar output could rise 4 percent to 25.3 million tonnes in 2014/15, the fifth surplus year in a row, because of higher cane yields in other major producing states of Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Heavy monsoon rains since Friday in the northern hill state of Uttarakhand caused two major rivers in downstream Uttar Pradesh to rise above danger marks. "Water is flowing above the red zone on the Ghagra river at Barabanki and the Rapti river at Balarampur of UP," an official at the National Disaster Management Authority told Reuters on Sunday. The floodwaters have affected eight districts of Uttar Pradesh and displaced thousands of people...

A cane field, location unknown, shot by Rasool Sarang, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

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