About four per cent of the 2,600,000 acres of rain-fed paddy planted in Bago Region have been damaged by floods.
In Bago Region, in the second week of October, Bago, Thanetpin, and DaikU areas suffered the worst due to floods, and about 100,000 acres of paddy were destroyed, according to the Rice NGO.
Similarly, the flood also damaged around 70,000 acres; some of them were flooded for only a few days and then resurfaced.
More than 80,000 acres of monsoon rice have been reportedly harvested in some townships of Bago Region (West) until the last week of September.
Ripe paddy fields are usually damaged by being submerged in water for one day. At the beginning of October, the harvesting of rain-fed rice began in some townships around the delta region and Pathein, but there was no flood yet.
As of 10 October, floods occurred in Bago and Hlegu townships, and the cultivated monsoon paddy was flooded.
Paddy has been planted for only a few months in the years when the Ngawun River floods in the western part of the delta region, so when the flood recedes, the damaged areas are replanted.
Since the status of paddy fields was close to harvest time in the Bago Region, where the flood occurred, there was only time left to plant beans instead of replanting the damage.
The amount of monsoon paddy damage around the Bago area is about 100,000 acres. It is only around four per cent compared to 2,600,000 acres planted and is about 0.7 per cent of rain-fed rice cultivation in the whole country.
Delta areas tend to flood around August, and there have been no floods for several years, but the Bago region experienced the worst flood in more than 60 years near the harvest season of rice this year. — TWA/CT
