HASSAN SERY: Farmer Shabbir Naqvi lost six members of his family in last month’s earthquake, among them his wife, daughter and father. Struggling with his grief, the last thing Naqvi wanted to have to worry about was his small herd of cattle so he sold them off at a fraction of the price he would have received before the quake.
“I couldn’t look after my cattle because of the winter. I had a great interest in it but I couldn’t do it,” Naqvi said over a cup of tea outside his wrecked farmhouse, about 10-km east of the devastated city of Muzaffarabad.
Naqvi is like many other farmers in the earthquake zone.
With their homes and barns in ruins and winter fast approaching, many fear they won’t be able to keep alive the animals that survived the Oct. 8 quake after the snow comes, so they’re slaughtering and selling them.
But agriculture and health officials say farm animals are vital for the mountain people — for both their health and economic well being — and the animal survivors of the quake must be kept alive.
“We’re very frightened when farmers begin selling their assets. What happens next year?” said Keith Ursel of the UN World Food Programme, which is helping to feed about one million human survivors of the quake.
The earthquake killed more than 73,000 people, most of them in mountain villages and hamlets.
More than 250,000 farm animals — the source of milk, yoghurt and butter — also perished, many killed when their dry-stone and concrete barns caved in, a livestock official said.
Animals grazing when the quake struck were killed in landslides, some were swept to their death in rivers. The disaster zone has been littered with decomposing cattle.
Aid officials, racing to get shelter and food to mountain communities before winter sets in, fear a second wave of death if sickness sweeps through a malnourished and traumatized population.
Animals provide an essential part of the people’s diet but milk production has fallen off dramatically, partly because so many animals were killed but also because many of the animals that survived have been neglected since the quake.
Many farmers have been selling animals to traders from the plains. Naqvi said he had sold his cows and buffaloes for less than half the usual price.
The loss of the animals and their dairy products is a big worry.
“It’s their only source of fresh and storable protein,” said Ursel. There would be a higher rate of mortality among survivors if they did not get a proper diet, he said.
But as well as a vital part of people’s diet, animals are the only way most rural people have of making money.
“Livestock is everything for them, as their accounts, as their cash. It is the only source of income for the rural community and there’s no alternative,” said Ghulam Shakoor Kiyani, director-general of animal husbandry in Azad Kashmir.
“More than 500,000 large animals are still existing, they need help for survival. The first thing is shelter because most of the area will be covered by snow,” he said.
After shelter, animals need fodder, including concentrated feed. But farmers also need help if they are to help their animals, said Kiyani.
“If they come to know that shelters will go to them, feed will go to them, some relief will be provided, certainly they will not sell their animals at cheap rates,” he said.—Reuters
