News Focus: DROUGHTS THREATEN FARMERS' LIVELIHOOD IN INDONESIA By Bambang Purwanto

Jakarta, June 18 (ANTARA) - As the rainy season in Indonesia, mainly in Java, seems to be over, droughts are looming and threatening the livelihood of crop-growing farmers.

The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency disclosed the dry season and droughts have been hitting many areas in Java since May 2008 while certain mountaineous areas in the island were predicted to experience the effects of climate change as of June this year.

"In East Java and East Nusa Tenggara provinces, the rainy season was followed by the dry season in April. The dry season is now on in Central Java, West Java and other areas in Java," a spokesman for the agency, Sutamto, said in Jakarta recently.

Among the dry season-hit areas in Java is Garut district in West Java, where drought had since June 1, 2008, destroyed 329.28 tons of unhulled rice worth Rp921,984,000 from 277 hectares of rice fields in 31 villages.

Meanwhile, droughts have caused farmers in Lebak district, Banten province, to fail to harvest from 2,547 hectares of rice fields.

"If rains do not fall this month, there will be no harvest again in August," the head of the Crops Protection Section at the Lebak Agriculture Office, Ade Fahrul Hadi, said.

Most of the rice plants were destroyed by droughts as they were planted on rain-fed fields in areas lacking irrigation facilities, Ade said.

Fearing further harvest failures, many farmers in this archipelagic country are resorting to various alternative ways to survive.

Farmers in Pandeglang district, Banten province, for instance, decided to change their profession and take up brick making to meet their daily needs due to droughts which have hit the district since three months ago.

"For almost the past two months , we have been using our dried-up rice fields to make bricks," a 50-year old farmer, Ruki, said, adding that he gained an income of about Rp50,000 daily from making bricks.

Another farmer, Sutisna (45), became a porter at the Rangkasbitung market in Banten to earn a living.

Besides in Java, farmers in other parts of Indonesia, including Bengkulu and West Nusta Tenggara (NTB), are also facing the same problem due to droughts.

The head of NTB's agricultural office, Dr Mashur, said some farmers in the province did not understood the planting pattern according to the season.

"There are some farmers who plant rice by the end of the rainy season making the plants look pale or even damaged," Mashur said.

Droughts are also threatening thousands of hectares of rice fields in a number of areas in Lombok Tengah district, he said, adding that rice cultivation in these regions was dependent on rain-fall.

Food crops

Meanwhile, the Agriculture Ministry has called on farmers in the country to plant food crops like corn or legumes instead of rice during the dry season in anticipation of the further impact of droughts.

Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono said recently droughts which were currently hitting a number of rice fields in the country were actually a normal phenomenon as they came in the dry season.

"The current dry season is wet in nature and thus there is still some rain-fall. Due to this condition, many farmers still plant rice although the volume of water is limited," the minister said.

These farmers were actually speculating and hoping they could plant rice three times in one year, he said.

The minister, however, said of the total area of rain-fed rice fields where rice was planted during the dry season, only 20-30 percent failed to harvest and the rest was safe and did not affect the national rice production.

Meanwhile, some farmers in Magelang district, Central Java province, have taken planting measures in accordance with the minister's call to plant food crops in anticipation of droughts.

"Farmers here (Magelang) have begun planting food crops instead of rice as supply of water is often inadequate during the dry season," said Longgar, a farmer in Ngargomulyo village in Magelang.

Farmers in Magelang prefer planting corn and legumes during the dry season, he said.

Head of the Farming Business section of the Magelang agricultural office, Agus Liem, confirmed that most farmers in Magelang planted food crops during the dry season.

"However, there are also farmers who still plant rice during the dry season but the results are not maximal," he said.

Agus called on farmers who still plant rice during the dry season to stop the practice to avoid harvest failure.

Data available at the Directorate General for Food Crops showed that rice fields in Indonesia affected by droughts until June 12, 2008 covered 46,332 hectares and harvests failed on 1,909 hectares of fields.

In 2007, 31,199 hectares of rice fields were affected by droughts and harvests failed on 2,115 hectares of rice fields.

Minister Anton Apriyantono said his ministry's Directorate General of Land and Water Management would make artificial rains in a number of areas especially those in northern coastal areas which were frequently hit by droughts.