The Jakarta Globe, Arti Ekawati, February 10, 2009
Just a little over a month into 2009, some 50,000 hectares of rice have already been completely destroyed by floods this year, exceeding the national annual average in recent years , the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday.
And the rainy season is not yet over.
“About 40,000 hectares per year were affected in each of the last five years,” said Sutarto Alimoeso, the ministry’s director general of food crops. “But this year, we’ve already lost some 50,000 hectares.”
Sutarto warned that as the rainy season still had at least another month to go, the eventual losses could eventually turn out to be even more severe. He added that the monetary value of the losses had yet to be calculated.
The worst floods have occurred in Aceh Province and West Kalimantan Province, as well as important rice-growing centers throughout the island of Java.
Minister Anton Apriyantono said on Monday that a total of 228,000 hectares of rice had been affected by floods, and that the ministry was providing farmers with assistance in the form of seeds and fertilizer for the next planting season.
“We’ve had fertilizer and seeds ready for distribution because we get floods almost every year,” Anton said at a hearing with the House of Representatives’ agriculture commission.
The abnormally wet weather is being caused by La Nina, and is expected to give rise to above-average rainfall through March, said the National Meteorology and Geophysics Agency, or BMG.
La Nina is a weather phenomenon that produces below-normal temperatures in South Pacific waters, leading to above-normal rainfall in the country.
However, Anton said the floods would not endanger the national production target of 63.5 million tons of unhusked rice this year, or disrupt planned rice exports, as the ministry had already factored the potential for flooding into its estimates.
To anticipate the worst, he said, the government had set aside 30,000 tons of rice seeds for affected farmers — enough for the planting of over 1.5 million hectares of rice.
Arifin Junaidi, chairman of the House agriculture commission, urged the government to simplify the procedures that farmers needed to go through to get fertilizer and seeds.
After flooding and crop destruction, he said, it usually takes more than six months for government assistance to find its way into the hands of farmers. This is because farmers first must report their needs to their local administrations, which then forward the requests to the ministry.
“Given the length of time involved, farmers often end up missing the next planting season,” he said.
Farmers in the main rice-growing hubs can expect two to three harvests per year. Planting occurs between January and March, and June and September.
Arifin said it would be better for the ministry to directly calculate the needs of farmers based on its assessment of crop damage.
“The ministry should directly give aid to farmers,” he said. “It would be so much more efficient.”
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