COLOMBO, Dec 24: Sri Lanka has suffered widespread devastation to agriculture, fisheries and rural livelihoods from Cyclone Ditwah, UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said.
A country brief released on December 22 said that the floods destroyed agricultural land, standing crops, livestock and fisheries assets and household food stocks.
“The cyclone struck when farmers had just planted or were in the process of planting the 2026 main season crop which accounts for the bulk of the country’s annual agricultural production”.
An estimated 2,27,000 farmers mostly small holder rice producers were affected incurring significant livelihood losses, it adds.
The total losses in the fishery sector are valued between 20.5 and 21.5 billion LKR.
It added that over 1,06,000 hectares of paddy, the staple food were partially or completely destroyed.
Maize, vegetables, onions and green gram- all important cash crops were destroyed.
Also, Sri Lanka’s exporters in Ditwah devastation-hit area are facing shortage in raw materials on agricultural products and spices, Export Development Board (EDB) Chairman Mangala Wijesinghe was quoted as saying by the economynext.com.
He said 573 at least exporters have been identified of being hit by the recent devastation.
“Majority of them are from Colombo, Gampaha, Puttalum, Kurunagala, and Kandy districts,” he told reporters at a media briefing in Colombo.
“They faced challenges in transport and lack of raw materials specially in export agricultural goods and spices. Still there are issues on the raw materials,” he said.
“We are still assessing the damage to the exporters,” he said adding that once completed that government will work with all other relevant authorities to address the post-disaster challenges.
Cyclone Ditwah, which made landfall in late November 2025 as the most severe storm to hit Sri Lanka in a century, unleashed devastating floods and landslides across the island’s central highlands and southern regions, severely disrupting the agricultural sector and threatening the nation’s key export commodities, including spices. (PTI)
Follow our WhatsApp channel
