ROME — The devastating earthquake in China last month caused around $6 billion in damages for farmers in Sichuan province and killed millions of farm animals, a U.N. agency said Monday.

An estimated 30 million people in rural communities were affected, many losing most of their assets, the Food and Agriculture Organization said. It will take three to five years to rebuild the agriculture sector in the southwest Chinese province, the agency said.

The FAO released the statement after a mission traveled to Sichuan to assess damage from the 7.9-magnitude quake on May 12, which killed 70,000 people.

The Rome-based agency said the quake also killed more than 3 million pigs — with some villages losing up to 70 percent of their livestock — caused grain stores to collapse and damaged agriculture machinery.

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written by Andrew