SWABI: Nearly 60 per cent of the Virginia tobacco crop has been badly damaged by a recent thunderstorm in Swabi district, farmers claimed.

A visit to the damaged fields and interaction with the farmers on Saturday revealed that tobacco growers were highly perturbed after the crop loss.

They told Dawn that the crop was flattened at a very critical stage as it was time to pick the leaves and take them to the furnace for curing.

“Once the tobacco plant falls to the ground its leaves are no longer useful for curing, causing growers huge losses,” Safdar Khan, a farmer from Maneri Bala village, said, adding that sadly, the government didn’t come to their rescue whenever they were struck by a natural calamity.

Similarly, Baswar Khan, another grower, said: “Due to the damage to our crop, we are stuck in an economic quagmire and there is no one to help us.”

When contacted, officials of both multinational and national tobacco purchasing companies admitted that the tobacco growers had suffered because their crop was badly damaged by thunderstorm.

Meanwhile, growers’ leaders asked the government to compensate the farmers hit by the natural calamity.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2025