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Upcoming El Niño may hurt plantation output by 15%
Plantation output is estimated to decline this year due to the impact of El Niño, which is expected to hit the country in the last quarter of the year, Agriculture Ministry officials have warned
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lantation output is estimated to decline this year due to the impact of El Niño, which is expected to hit the country in the last quarter of the year, Agriculture Ministry officials have warned.
Agriculture Ministry plantation director general Gamal Nasir said on Thursday that production of plantation commodities might decline by up to 15 percent from 38.8 million tons on average last year if El Niño hit the country.
'El Niño can cause unpredictable climate change, mostly in the form of drought,' Gamal said.
El Niño is a climate phenomenon that can cause droughts, floods and fluctuating crop yields in the Pacific equatorial region.
Evi Lutfiati, climate information head at the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG), said that El Niño was projected to hit the country during the next two quarters until early 2015.
'Based on current weather indications, we have predicted that the intensity of El Niño will be low to moderate. It will also hit only central and western parts of the country,' said Evi.
Gamal said, however, that BMKG's predictions were sometimes inaccurate, and that El Niño would mostly affect production of palm oil and sugarcane, which need a lot of water to grow well.
'This year, El Niño will likely reach its highest intensity around September, which can create dry season conditions in certain areas,' he said.
He warned that if the scenario took place, the country's crude palm oil (CPO) production could decline by between 15 and 20 percent from 26 million tons last year.
Gamal said that if the dry season lasted three months, the stakes would be even higher as it would probably take two to three years for oil palm farmers to revitalize their plantations.
PT Astra Agro Lestari spokesman Tofan Mahdi said previously that El Niño would not like affect much on the firm's production.
'We have a good water management system in which we can adjust how much water we need for our plantation during dry and wet seasons,' he said.
Nurwono Paridjo, the director of annual plants of the ministry's plantation directorate general, said that sugar output was likely to drop to around 2.5 million tons this year from the target of 2.9 million tons due to the impact of El Niño.
The ministry's spice and herbs director, Azwar Abu Bakar, added that the production of coffee and cacao would not be very much affected by El Niño.
