NAWABSHAH, PAKISTAN — A young woman stepped into the waist-deep flood waters that covered her farmland, washing away the wrinkled cotton stalks for the few surviving white flowers. Every time I stepped in it was unstable. Her feet sank into the soft ground. A snake slipped past her. A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed in her ear.
But farm worker Barmeena, just 14, had no choice. “It was our only source of livelihood,” she told a New York Times journalist during a visit.
She is one of millions of farm workers whose fields were submerged in the record-breaking floods that swept across Pakistan. In the worst-hit areas, where floodwaters have submerged entire villages, officials warn the floodwaters may not fully recede for months.
Yet wherever the water has receded, farm workers scramble to salvage what they can from the ragged remains of the cotton and rice harvest. Many already owe hundreds or thousands of dollars to landlords who farm their fields each year as part of a system that has long governed much of rural Pakistan.
Each planting season, landlords give farmers loans to buy fertilizer and seeds. In exchange, farmers plow their fields and earn a small portion of the harvest, part of which is used to repay loans.
But now their summer harvest is ruined. If the water does not recede, we cannot plant the wheat that we harvest each spring. Even if they do, production is certain to decline when land is damaged by cataclysmic floods combined with the cataclysms of massive glacial melt and record monsoon rainfall.
Extreme weather events that damage crop yields and put farmers in debt are becoming increasingly common and unlikely to end. More and more farmers are migrating to cities in search of stable work. As a result, landlords are worried about coming farm labor shortages, they say.
But other farmers feel compelled to stay.
“Our life is like that. We get into debt, we can’t earn the money to pay it back, and we do it all over again.” Mairaj Meghwal, 40, a farmer from the village of Lal Muhammad in Sindh province, one of the most flood-hit areas, said:
About 40 families live in Lal Muhammad. Their mud-brick homes are surrounded by tall meadows and connected by dirt paths. The nearest town is about an hour by bike from him, a long flat road with cotton fields on both sides.
Inside the village, children ran across the meadows and women fetched water from rusty hand pumps. A few cows moaned from makeshift pens made of wooden sticks.
Most of the families here, like those in neighboring villages, have been farming this land for over 100 years. Their ancestry is part of Pakistan’s minority, lower-caste minority Hindu population, who made their living in the fields during a time when it was still considered British India, and the British turned the subcontinent into a Hindu-majority country. remained after the split between India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
But even as the world around us is redefined, little has changed for generations of farmers.
As a child growing up in a village, Megwal would bring his father a packed lunch (mainly dal and roti, traditional lentils and round flatbreads) as he worked in the fields in the heat of the sun. By the time he was big enough to wield a shovel, Mr. Megwar was working the land with his father.
For as long as he can remember, the rhythm of life has been driven by the earth. Every fall, I spend a few months watering, leveling, plowing, and hand-arranging the wheat seeds. Every spring, his family pours the fields to harvest wheat, then prepares to plant cotton seeds that will flower in the fall.
Harvest is the lifeblood of his family. The cash they get from cotton never exceeds $300 or $400 and is used to pay for needed medicines, vegetables and other necessities. But more important than that is wheat, which is a staple food for his family all year round.
“It’s even more important than our children. We’re alive and dying for wheat,” explained Paduma, 50, a relative of his. Like, she goes by just one name.
So when monsoon rains like never before hit villages and fields for 56 hours in a row early last month, panic erupted when one crop was submerged and the chances of missing the next crop season increased. has occurred.
Fearing that her house would collapse, Paduma said she yelled at her children to enter the courtyard and prayed to God for mercy. Megwar stood nearby in the rain, watching the water cover the family’s rope bed and cover the television, fan and refrigerator. Soon the bike he was taking to town was submerged.
As the water continued to rise, he and his family dragged a few cattle to a nearby road, a piece of land that was slightly elevated. The rain drowned out the children’s cries. But Mr. Megwal could hear the walls of his home crumble one by one in the distance like little explosions. Every few hours he went into the fields and watched helplessly as the water rose higher and higher until the white cotton flowers were submerged in brown sludge.
“The crops were being destroyed before my eyes,” he said.
When the deluge finally stopped, the whole village rushed to investigate the damage. Nearly everyone’s homes were completely or partially destroyed. Pots, pans and cooking utensils were buried under the tattered adobe bricks. But even more devastating were the fields.
Paduma’s son, Sunil Kumar, 20, and his wife looked around in disbelief at the former cotton harvest.
Mr. Kumar was speechless for what felt like an eternity before finally replying:
When Paduma arrived, she passed out.
“My heart was on fire,” she said. “Everything was destroyed. There was nothing left.”
With each passing day, the depth of their family’s financial crisis became more apparent. Paduma, who developed a fever due to suspected malaria, went to a nearby hospital a week later only to find that the medicine he needed had doubled in price. She went to the market empty-handed for vegetables, but the prices jumped from twice her pre-flood prices to three times hers.
A few weeks later, when the water began to recede, Paduma and the other women returned to the fields in a desperate attempt to salvage as much cotton as they could. One recent evening she roamed a muddy field, dissecting a surviving flower and finding small pieces without a black stain. . The puddles that covered the fields were green and thick with sludge. Above her head, a dragonfly circles in the air.
Every night for weeks, Meghwar put sticks into the remaining flood waters and returned at dawn to check that the water level had dropped by an inch. Usually at this time he prepares the land for planting wheat by mid-October.
Many of my neighbor’s fields are still submerged, and there is hope for planting wheat. all gone. But even if Mr. Megwar manages to plant wheat in time, his prospects remain bleak.
He said he already owes his landlord $400 for the seed and fertilizer he used to plant the cotton. Collecting everything he needs to plant wheat means borrowing more money, and digging yourself out of his debt feels nearly impossible.
“I don’t like this life, but we’re stuck with it,” he said. He looked down at his hands and shook his head.
“We are slaves. It is clear,” he said.