"Currently, there are a total of 1,453 hectares of dried out paddy fields in East Java province with 38 hectares to face crop failure," Chief of Technical Assistance Unit for Food Protection from East Java`s Agriculture Office Kethut Marsudi said here on Tuesday.
Responding to the situation, he said, the Ministry of Agriculture had prepared funding assistance for the ill-fated farmers in East Java. To get the aid, farmers were asked to come to the nearest Agriculture Office.
Meanwhile, though it is predicted that the current dry season has affected 95,891 hectares of rice fields in various regions in Indonesia, yet it is still considered normal. Of the total, about 3,713 hectares have failed to produce yields.
Agriculture Minister Suswono said the number was still lower than last year.
He said besides drought, floods and insects had so far also been the causes of harvest failures. During the past eight months in 2011, the number of rice fields affected by floods was recorded at 115,851 hectares and 16,471 hectares of them cannot be harvested.
The number of rice fields affected by plant organisms in the period reached 577,015 hectares and 35,454 hectares of them therefor cannot be harvested. In all the total of rice fields that cannot be harvested from January to August 2011 reached 55,638 hectares.
"It is still below the average in the past five years recorded at around 100,000 hectares a year," the minister said.
He said the government had provided Rp374 billion to help farmers who had no harvests.
Therefore, it is expected that this year`s drought would not bring serious impacts, though several parts of the country have experienced minor impacts. After all, rain has also begun to fall in a number of regions.
Western Sumatra, namely areas from Aceh, North Sumatra and Riau provinces, will have rain at the end of this month or in the middle of next month. In the meantime, the eastern areas of Sumatra, like West Sumatra, South Sumatra and Lampung, will enter the rainy season at the end of October or early in November.
Provinces in Java, including Banten, West Java, Central Java and East Java, are expected to enter the rainy season at the end of October or early in November, according to the BMKG.
(T.A051/H-NG/A014)
Editor: Priyambodo RH
Copyright © ANTARA 2011
