A heavy storm wreaked havoc in Saptari and Siraha districts of Madhesh Province on Wednesday evening. The storm damaged ready-to-harvest mango fruits worth millions of rupees in the area.

Hundreds of farmers have suffered huge losses as the storm uprooted trees and destroyed the mangoes.

“I went to the mango orchard on Thursday morning thinking that there could be minor damage to the fruits from Wednesday's storm. I was shocked to see the damage caused. A huge quantity of ready-to-harvest mangoes had fallen to the ground. Many branches were broken and some trees were uprooted,” lamented Dipendra Kumar Chaudhary, a mango farmer in ward 2 of Rupani Rural Municipality of Saptari district.

The farmers were all set to earn a good amount of money by selling mangoes. However, the storm dashed their hopes at the eleventh hour.

Gudari Yadav of ward 9 of Mirchaiya Municipality has a mango orchard in his 16 kattha (around 0.54 hectares) land. Typically, he generally earns between Rs100,000 and Rs150,000 each year selling mangoes. This year, Yadav had struck a deal with a fruit trader to sell his mangoes for Rs140,000. “I received Rs40,000 as an advance payment, and the trader was ready to harvest the mangoes within a few days. But the storm damaged the farm,” said Yadav.

Saptari is a pocket area of mango production in the country. According to the Agriculture Knowledge Centre in Rajbiraj, mango trees are cultivated in around 8,500 hectares of land in Saptari. “It is estimated that around 12 percent of the total mango production was destroyed by the storm, causing a loss of around Rs250 million,” said Kisun Dev Raut, acting chief at the centre.