Slamet Susanto, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta
It has not rained in Yogyakarta for the past 10 days, and the local farmers are concerned this will lead to poor harvests.
Besides rice seedlings, thousands of hectares of side crops, including ground nuts and corn, are also facing water shortages and are at risk of failure.
"We sowed the rice seedlings as soon as the rain came, around two weeks ago. At the time we believed the rainy season had arrived. We were wrong. There hasn't been any rain since. Unfortunately, the seeds have already begun to grow and they need water badly. Now, most of them have already withered," 57-year-old Poyo said.
Poyo, a farmer from Gedangrejo village in Gunung Kidul regency, said the irrigation channel was dry because of the lack of rain.
"The seedlings, which are now around 15 days old on average, will die if it doesn't rain in the next few days," Poyo said.
Besides crop failure, farmers also face financial losses because they outlaid money for the seedlings and to plow their fields.
Another farmer, Pranoto, spent some Rp 200,000 to buy 20 kg of seedlings. The field he plowed has also dried up.
"I will have to plow the field again later when it rains, because it is parched now, even though I spent Rp 300,000 to get it plowed," he said.
Ratusna, a farmer in Srigading village in Bantul, who also sowed rice seedlings early, now is paying extra money to irrigate his field with water pumps.
"I have sowed the seedlings. If I don't water my field they will die," a farmer from Sanden, Purwanto, said.
He said he needed to irrigate fields so they could be plowed in the next three days to soften the soil.
"I have to add money to pay for gasoline to run the pump," he said.
Head of Bantul Agricultural Office, Edy Suharyanto, said there were more than 1,200 hectares of farms facing water shortages in hilly areas, growing rice as well as side crops.
"The farms are located in rain-dependent areas, different to those which can be irrigated with water pumped from rivers," he said.
Edy said crop failure would be imminent if it did not rain within seven days.
"There are currently at least 12,000 hectares of farms parched. If it doesn't rain in the next week, more farmland would be parched," Edy said.
According to the Meteorological and Geophysics Agency (BMG) in Yogyakarta, the lack of rain over the past 10 days is due to the presence of storms in various areas.
Satellite images show at least three storms north of the equator in southern China, the eastern Philippines and around Thailand, moving at a speed of 80 knots.
"Every cloud and wind is drawn to the storms," a BMG officer, Agus, said.
The three storms, Agus said, had led to a lack of rain, especially in Central and East Java, but the agency could not yet predict when the rains would return.
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