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ANTUL: Extreme weather, which among other things is marked by extreme humidity, has caused hundreds of hectares of ready-to-harvest rice fields in Bantul, Yogyakarta, to experience harvest failure due to fungus attacks.

“Extreme weather has caused fungi to flare and attack rice plants, causing their branches to dry up and break,” head of Bantul regency Agriculture Agency, Edy Suharyanta, said.

The condition, according to Edy, disturbed the fertilization process. A large amount of the grains were not fully filled or even empty. Other attacks on the rice plants were by planthoppers, locally called as wereng. “Hundreds of hectares of rice fields have been experiencing such attacks according to our findings,” said Edy.

Together, the fungi and wereng attacks have caused at least a 60 percent decrease in the harvest of local farmers.

“Normally we would already have 20 sacks of unhusked rice. Now we only have 10 sacks of them, some of which are empty grains,” Satari, a farmer, said, adding that the farmers had taken some precautionary measures including spraying fungicides.

“I frequently spray fungicide but my rice plants have still been damaged. I’ve experienced harvest failure,” another farmer, Didi, said.