A Case Study on the Impact of the July 2026 Flash Floods on Vegetable Supply Chains in the CHT–Chattogram

Abstract

Beginning on 5 July 2026, exceptionally heavy monsoon rainfall combined with hill runoff to trigger flash floods across south-eastern Bangladesh. By 13 July, the United Nations had confirmed 51 deaths and 1.11 million people affected across ten districts (UN Bangladesh, 2026). Within the same fortnight, official assessments recorded 15,911 hectares of damaged cropland in Chattogram district alone, alongside 517 kilometres of damaged roads and 180 damaged bridges and culverts (The Business Standard, 2026a; The Daily Star, 2026a). This paper traces how those two shocks — one to production, one to the road network — travelled through the region's vegetable supply chain and surfaced as shortages and price spikes in Chattogram's kitchen markets over the following month. Drawing on government damage bulletins, humanitarian situation reports, and dated market surveys, we find that transport disruption, more than crop loss on its own, best explains how quickly and how far prices moved. We argue that Bangladesh's disaster-damage assessments — which currently report crop hectares and road kilometres in separate bulletins — would benefit from tracking the two together, and we close with three practical recommendations for shortening the recovery window.