DROUGHT VS COVID-19 - THREATEN PADDY FARMERS

Unlike the rest of their crop planting peers  who were forced to let their yields rot due to distributional hiccups nowadays the paddy farmers in Malaysia has not felt any uncomfortable pang of the Covid-19 induced partial lockdown. This is so because Malaysia only harvests its paddies twice a year and for the farmers in Kedah as the state that contributes half of the approximately 1.7 million metric tonne of total yield in Malaysia for the next harvesting season will be in September 2020.  Currently only the first few days of the enforcement  of MCO (Movement Control Order) were hard. The paddy farmers couldn’t toil the land but that all changed after we got the permission letter from the authorities as claimed by Alor Setar farmer Mohd Faisal recently. The country enters its third phase of the MCO today where only sectors and industries providing essential services were given operational leeway and that includes agriculture. While the MCO has yet to become a cause for concern for paddy farmers, the erratic weather pattern is a particularly the lack rainfall and out-of-the-blue drought spells. To start planting, the paddy fields need to be irrigated and to do that we need water which we don’t have at the moment. So, we cannot do any work. No work means no money for non-landowners like me said Hadi Rahman as a farmer from Pendang. Blog "Anim Agriculture Technology" write a report on a report by local newspaper claimed that drought affect more worries the covid-10 virus in Malaysia Granary area in Kedah.

Sources from the Muda Agricultural Development Authority (MADA) the outfit that oversees and manages almost all paddy fields in Kedah to have confirmed that there has indeed been a serious water shortage. The Muda river and the Ampang Jajar dam both has inadequate water to supply to all of our granary areas for now as mentioned by one of the sources.  Despite its centuries-long agrarian roots, Malaysia is one of the two rice-producing countries in the region in which the other being the Phillippines and that has been unable to farm enough rice to feed its ever-increasing population. According to latest available figure, locally farmed rice amounts to 73 per cent of total rice consumed by entire Malaysian population which ate about 200,000 tonnes of rice a month. Last month in August 2020, fear of rice scarcity was floated after Vietnam as the Malaysia’s second largest rice supplier has announced an export ban due to food security concerns in light of the Covid-19 epidemic. The last time Vietnam and along with India had imposed export restrictions it resulted with the 2007-2008 rice crisis where global rice price ballooned to 149 per cent. In a bid to allay the fear, Agriculture Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ronald Kiandee assured Malaysians that the country has enough rice, adding that the current stockpile in which which consisted of rice sold by traders, wholesalers and millers as stood at 523,000 tonnes. Simple math seemed to suggest that the current stockpile can last for at least 2.6 months. And while four days ago, Vietnam has decided to resume rice export, albeit at a 40 per cent lower amount than usual, some of the more learned farmers believed that these worrying episodes should be a wake-up call for policymakers. These sudden droughts have been happening frequently over the past couple of years and since we cannot control the weather, we should develop new paddy varieties that are more tolerant to water shortage without jeopardising yield. There are currently five varieties of paddy widely used in the country. All of it are very water dependant. Most farmers know it can be done. They have managed to move from single to double cropping. We have also been able to produce varieties that matures in 110 days instead of the previous six months. It can be done. 

Thanks.

By,

M Anim,

Senior Agronomist,

Malacca City, 
Malaysia.

(8 October 2020).