Geneva - The tropical storms that struck the Philippines last month have caused wide-scale damage to agricultural land and brought massive losses to farmers, the United Nations said Tuesday. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) some 185,763 hectares of rice farming land were hit, about 35,000 of which were completely destroyed.
The national department of agriculture in Manila has estimated the damage to crops and agricultural facilities caused by the two storms to have reached 213 million dollars.
Corn, high value commercial crops and livestock and poultry were all lost, and the UN stressed the local population was in need of seeds, fertilizers and other goods to continue farming.
The UN has appealed for 74 million dollars in relief aid for the country but has only attracted 19 per cent of that sum.
John Holmes, the UN's head of humanitarian issues, was in the Philippines this week to visit the scene and run assessments with his teams in the field and the government.
