10,000 hectares of paddy perish in current drought

JAKARTA (JP): Some 10,000 hectares of the 73,000 hectares of paddy fields hard hit by the current drought will "definitely" perish, a senior government official said yesterday.

There is no way to save 10,000 hectares of paddy fields because they are located far away from irrigation canals, Director General for Water Resources Development Soeparmono said.

Soeparmono said the government has encouraged farmers to use irrigation water more efficiently because there is no other way to save food crops during the dry season.

The government is also considering using water pumps and tightening the rotational irrigation system, he said.

Press reports say the northern coast of West Java, dubbed Indonesia's main rice basket, has been badly affected by the current dry spell which has also hit many areas in Central Java.

The dry season typically lasts from April through September.

Soeparmono said that of the 73,130 hectares of paddy fields now in danger, 47,300 hectares are in West Java, 8,345 in Central Java, 2,890 in East Java, 14,000 hectares in Lampung and 533 hectares in West Sumatra and other provinces.

He said irrigated areas in several provinces, including 7,000 hectares in West Java and 1,800 hectares in East Java, are quite literally dry.

Indonesia, where most of the population depends on rice for nutrition, has over 3,500 million hectares of irrigated land in 10 provinces known as the nation's "rice bowls."

Food stock

Now 1.7 million hectares are being threatened by the current dry spell and only secondary crops like maize and beans can be cultivated, Soeparmono said.

The problem is mainly caused by the fact that the 33 reservoirs in the prime rice producing areas can only irrigate 18 million hectares of agricultural land, he added.

When asked if the current dry spell threatens the national food stock, the director general declined to go into details.

The present dry season will not affect the national food stock, he said, refusing to elaborate, Antara reported.

Soeparmono also blamed the irrigation water shortage partly on farmers' failure to apply appropriate cropping patterns, thus wasting much water.

In some areas, he said farmers started planting 15 to 40 days behind schedule so that their crop was still young when the dry season came.

"Remember that not all rice fields have access to irrigation water," he said. (pan/har)