Dry Season Hits Rice Farmers: Indonesia

The dry season in Indonesia is having a dramatic affect on rice production throughout the archipelago. The prolonged rainy season in certain parts of the country has had similar affects as in East Nusa Tenggara.

In East Nusa Tenggara some basic foods might be hard to get in more than 20 villages following harvest failure due to prolonged rain as Deputy Regent Raymundus Fernandes explains. "We have to be clear about what we mean by food crisis first. Maybe there is no rice but they still have corn and other vegetables"

Officials were verifying whether the villages in East Miomafo in Timor Tengah regency were experiencing a food shortage. Last month a similar problem was also reported in Sikka regency.

Over in West Java a long dry spell in West Java had affected over 4,400 hectares of rice fields and threatened another 40,000 hectares as of early this month. The dry weather also caused 82 hectares of rice crops to fail, with 14 areas, including rice producers Indramayu, Karawang and Majalengka hit the hardest.

West Java Agriculture Office head Asep S. Abdie said the situation in Indramayu regency where 1,487 hectares of rice fields were affected was of the most immediate concern. He said it was unlikely there would be a shortage of rice because the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency predicted the dry season would end in October.

However he remains optimistic this year's production target of 9.6 million tons of rice will be met. "As of May we had produced five tons of unhusked rice."