This time every year rice farmers in Myanmar have two months to prepare their fields and start planting, so that they will have a harvest at the end of the year.
This year, a lot of these fields are under water, flooded after the cyclone, and at the end of the year, the already dire shortage for food could become desperate.
65 % of the the rice in Myanmar comes from the Irawaddy Delta. According to the International Development Enterprises (IDE), an international NGO working to boost agricultural productivity in the area, around 150,000 households do have good land on which they can plant. However flooding remains in the areas worst hit by the cyclone, where families had converted mangrove swamps into arable land. And many of these families barely have enough to feed themselves.
Even if the floods were gone, the farmers will need special salt resistant seeds for cultivation in soil that has been under sea water for so long. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 20 % of the land will need rehabilitating. What NGOs are doing now are analysing and distributing appropriate seeds for the the farmers and giving out Chinese-made hand tillers, to replace the animals lost in the disaster which traditionally plough the land.
In Myanmar, government work brings in about US$30 a month. Most poor families spend around 60-70 % of their income on food. They are being impacted by hikes in global food prices caused by bad harvests, low stocks and rising demand.
According to a Reuters report dated June 2, 2007
A 50 kg bag of rice now sells for 38,000 kyat, or about $34.50, up from 27,000 kyat
...Peanut oil, used for cooking, has jumped nearly 40 percent to 5,500 kyat for a 2 kg container.
It must seem ludicrous that people living in the main rice-producing areas of a region which produces more than half of the world's rice are in a situation where they are unable to feed themselves.
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