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Nearly 100 regencies face crop failure due to drought
The current dry season has led to a drought that has affected over 100,000 hectares of rice fields in about 100 regencies and towns on Java and some other islands with more than 9,000 ha facing crop failure, the Agriculture Ministry has said
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T
he current dry season has led to a drought that has affected over 100,000 hectares of rice fields in about 100 regencies and towns on Java and some other islands with more than 9,000 ha facing crop failure, the Agriculture Ministry has said.
The imminent crop failure could potentially lead to a slump in rice production, the ministry added.
“There has been no rain for more than 30 days in the provinces of Banten, West Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java, West Nusa Tenggara [NTB] and East Nusa Tenggara [NTT],” the ministry’s agriculture infrastructure director general, Sarwo Edhy, said at a meeting in Jakarta on Monday.
Sarwo said East Java was the most affected province, where 34,006 ha of rice fields had become dry, 5,069 ha of which have experienced crop failure.
The next most affected area is Central Java with 32,809 ha of dry fields, of which 1,893 ha face crop failure. West Java is the third most affected, with 25,416 ha of dry fields and 624 ha of failed fields.
In Yogyakarta, crops failed in 1,757 ha of rice fields out of the 6,139 ha affected by the drought, and in NTT 15 ha failed out of 55 ha. Banten had 3,464 ha affected by the drought and NTB had 857 ha, with no record of crop failure, Sarwo said.
The ministry’s food crop director general, Sumardjo Gatot Irianto, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that the 9,358 ha of rice fields facing crop failure had caused a decrease in grain production by 45,000 tons.
However, he said, the dry season had brought an opportunity to transform swampy areas into agricultural fields. He added that during the dry season, the government had developed swamp areas into more than 100,000 ha for rice cultivation.
The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) predicted that the dry season might last from July to September, with its peak in August threatening more crop failure.
Previously, the head of the climate and air quality information division of the BMKG, Hary Tirto Djatmiko, said this year’s dry season might be drier and more intense than last year’s as a result of the El Niño phenomenon.
El Niño is the warming of sea surface temperatures in the central to eastern Pacific Ocean, which has an impact on world climate changes characterized by floods and droughts in different parts of the world.
In 2015, El Niño resulted in increased rainfall in several Latin American countries, and dry conditions and reduced rainfall in Indonesia.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported recently that El Niño in the current year would have an impact on the security and availability of food in the regions of South Africa, North Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
In anticipation of crop failure, Sarwo said his ministry had instructed the use of a number of water pumps that had been sent to the agricultural offices in the regencies and towns affected by drought.
“We have distributed 93,860 water pumps to regencies and towns in the last four years, ” said Sarwo, adding that about 20,000 water pumps were targeted to be available in the drought-affected areas.
To compensate farmers for their losses, the Agriculture Ministry had been intensively disseminating information about the Rice Farm Business Insurance program since the beginning of this year, he said.
Under the program, state-owned insurance firm PT Asuransi Jasa Indonesia (Jasindo) would provide compensation of Rp 6 million (US$425) per ha of drought-affected fields, he said. (syk)
