Muzaffarabad: The Chenab river stretches over 26km near Qasim Bela, where until a month ago its river bed was less than a kilometre wide.
Fertile farmland lies beneath the gushing muddy waters — tractors and thrashers included.
"We were expecting a bumper cotton crop after an outstanding wheat season," said Abdul Rahman Bhutta, a local farmer whose three patches of land scattered along the Indus and Chenab rivers have been inundated unexpectedly.
The farming community was wary of monsoon rains in the central Punjab region where humid, hot and dry conditions are generally preferred for better agriculture.
Owing to exceptionally long monsoons and incompetent flood management, Pakistan has now lost 600,000 tonnes of wheat in the deluge so far and some 250,000 livestock.
However, food storage facilities in Muzaffargarh and Multan districts are said to be in good and usable condition.
"The bumper wheat crop of last year has come to our rescue and the country does not immediately need to import wheat for current needs," a Punjab government official told Gulf News.
Rahman Bhutta and his two sons visit their farmland daily in the hope that waters might have receded.
Still submerged
"Fifteen days after flooding, our land remains submerged in at least four to six feet of water," says his son Khizer Bhutta.
The central and southern regions have also lost rice and cotton crops — in addition to ready-to-harvest crops such as mangoes and dates.
"Pakistan has lost 10 per cent of its cotton share, worth Rs50 billion (Dh2.1 billion) which would adversely affect its textile industry needs as well as exports," said Dr Mehboob Ali, founding director of the Cotton Research Institute of Pakistan, Multan.
He fears an increase in the price of raw cotton worldwide due to excessive rains and damage to the crop in other countries as well.
