Rice seed shortage as sowing season nears

Severe food scarcity looms as farmers have no means to start planting: Experts
Nirmal Ghosh, Straits Times 22 May 08;

BANGKOK - EXPERTS are warning that a shortage of rice seeds in the Irrawaddy delta could spell a severe rice supply crunch in a few months.

When Cyclone Nargis struck the delta - which produces some 40 per cent of Myanmar's rice - just after the harvest, the storm surge and 190kmh winds scattered much of the harvested rice that was stored.

It also destroyed much of the seed stock required for the next planting, which should be taking place between now and early next month as the monsoon rains move in.

Dr To Phuc Tuong, a scientist at the International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos in the Philippines, told The Straits Times over the phone that the institute was waiting for details from Myanmar on the extent of the damage and loss.

Salination due to sea water intrusion in the lower delta would not be a major issue, he said, noting that recent rain would have washed the salt out of the soil.

'The worry is that they won't have enough seeds,' he said, adding that seed stocks in the upper delta may have survived better than in the lower delta.

The first choice for the replenishment of seeds would be from domestic stocks elsewhere in the country.

But not all seeds would be suitable for the conditions in the delta, said Dr Tuong. And importing seeds, he pointed out, would be difficult because of issues such as quarantine.

Adding to the problem of a shortage of seed stock is the fact that thousands of buffaloes used to plough the rice fields were killed in the cyclone.

While cheap light tractors from China may be able to fill the gap somewhat, the capacity of the communities in the delta to function in a normal manner has also been shattered as well.

Besides the human death toll, a large number of the two million people affected by the cyclone have been displaced and are sheltering in makeshift camps far from their destroyed homes and fields.

The pinch will be felt towards the end of the year, when the crop that would normally be sown now should be harvested.

'The next two harvests are going to be greatly affected, and there will be virtually no output from those areas during that time,' Mr Sean Turnell, a specialist on Myanmar at Australia's Macquarie University, told the Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy journal earlier this week.

'We are likely to see considerable food and rice shortages for the next couple of years.'

'The damage to the economy is going to be profound because the timing of this could not be worse, with the world's rice prices at record levels and many other countries restricting exports and so on.'

The looming problem underlines the need for sustained assistance to the stricken population of the delta.

It also points to the ripple effect of the disaster on the country as a whole, where most locals live on less than US$1 (S$1.35) a day, and labour under an inflation rate of well above 30 per cent, by some estimates.