This is the second year in a row that the passage of storms and cyclones has not spared farmers in the west. On this mango orchard, the strong winds knocked down several tons of still green fruit, shortly before the last harvest of the season. It remains to be seen whether the farmers will be able to be compensated after this heavy loss.
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If the sun was shining again this Tuesday morning, and Cyclone Freddy was already heading far to the west, Yasmine Ramassamy’s orchard still showed the scars of this night of strong winds.
On this 5-hectare farm at Tour des Roches in Saint-Paul, the farmer saw her February harvest be ruined in a few hours… Hundreds of mangoes were strewn on the ground on Tuesday. A carpet of fruit destined for destruction.
José mangoes, Auguste mangoes, American mangoes… here, around ten different varieties are grown. But the mangoes are very sensitive to the wind, and all of them suffered from the passage of Freddy, who blew his gusts reaching 100km/h over the region. “It was a very big surprise especially since the day had been very very calm. It started blowing at 10 p.m. and lasted all night. With each gust of wind, it was tons of mangoes that spread on the ground“.
This third and last harvest of the season was however very abundant, which makes the loss even heavier for Yasmine Ramassamy. “I was counting on 20 tons of José mangoes to be harvested, from now to the end of March. I was counting on it to make my figure because unfortunately this year I had almost no fruit in December or January“, sighs the farmer, who also wanted to make up for the losses of Batsirai and Emnati, which last year had already ravaged her farm.
For the exploitation, it is a pure loss, since none can be recovered, not being yet at maturity. “It’s not going to mature anymore because they suffered a shock, the impact was very violent. We will still have to pick them up to burn them, because they will rot, damage the soil, and attract fruit flies.“, explains Yasmine Ramassamy, who has been running this orchard for 40 years.
As soon as Freddy left, an arboreal technician from the Chamber of Agriculture was already on the ground to see the damage to the farmers. “The expert came to make a diagnosis of the loss to bring the information to the level of the DAAF (Direction of Agriculture, Food and Forests, editor’s note)“.
This expert from the Chamber of Agriculture met three western farmers this morning. “We make a visual observation, we look at what remains on the trees, and here there is not much left on the branches. For orchards that have a late harvest, it’s a big loss because they were starting the harvest“, he observed.
However, this is a simple observation, and not a promise of compensation. Because this will only be paid in the event of recognition of a state of natural disaster; however, Freddy’s limited impact might not allow it. “The problem is that the situation is specific to a small area, so state aid is going to be difficult, but we may be able to get help from the specific Department, to help these farms keep their heads out of the water“, evokes Jean-Michel Moutama, president of the CGPER, who came to see the damage in this mango orchard.
Already last year, hurricane episodes had damaged crops in this same region. “We must help these farms because two years in a row without income is complicated“, insists the president of the CGPER.
