Banana farmers of Bara district are reeling from a recent storm that devastated their produce worth millions of rupees. Banana is planted across 450 bigha of land in Bara.

The storm affected farm products such as banana, corn, mango and litchi planted in the northern region of the district that includes Nijgadh, Singaul and Tangiya.

Ek Bahadur Shrestha, president of Fruits Producers’ Association, Bara, said the natural disaster has made it difficult for farmers to recover their costs.

As per the association, around 300 farmers in Nijgadh area are engaged in commercial banana farming.

“The farmers were dealt a cruel hand by mother nature as the fruit was ready for harvesting,” said Shrestha, urging the authority to provide financial relief to farmers for their losses.

Ram Bahadur Khatri, a farmer from Nijgadh-8, said the storm devastated fruit bearing plants. He lost more than 800 banana plants planted on 25 kattha of land during the recent storm.

His loss is estimated to be worth over Rs400,000.

Som Prasad Timilsina, a farmer in Nijgadh-6 has similar grievances. Timilsina who planted the fruit on four bigha of land said he was also heavily affected. “The premature fruits do not fetch good market price.”

The investment by Gokarna Thapa, a farmer from Nijgadh-2, who planted banana in 10 bigaha of land, has also gone down the drain. “Almost all the banana plants have been devastated by the storm,” Thapa said.

As per the farmers, a single banana plant bears fruit worth Rs400,000 on average. They also expressed their woes on whether they would get insurance coverage from insurers.

Just two weeks ago, banana farmers in Kalika Municipality, Chitwan, experienced  heavy

losses after banana trees were mysteriously cut down and destroyed by a group of vandals. That incident saw 12 farmers losing nearly Rs1.5 million in produce.