Figures released on paddy hit by both floods and drought

Figures released on paddy hit by both floods and drought

Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Veng Sakhon revealed that around 154,328 hectares of paddy in 19 provinces were completely ruined and 449,797 hectares were affected by drought and flooding but salvable in the early cultivation and end-of-harvest season last year.

“To contribute to the difficulty of the farmers and to push food production after the flooding, the government has released more than 6,500 tonnes of seedlings to distribute to 69,816 household farmers to replant their crops,” said Sakhon.

He added that with the collaboration of the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM), the local authorities and relevant institutions over the seedling intervention, the cultivation of paddy was on time.

Sakhon said the government spent around $4.53 million on paddy seedlings

and transporting those seedling to farmers. He added that the restoration of the crops and paddy after the flood ran from early November 2020 until December 2020.

“As a result of the rehabilitation so far, farmers have managed the harvest and could end the harvest season by April this year,” he added. “The rehabilitation of paddy gave the farmers from three to 6.5 tonnes per hectare (an average of 4.5 tonnes per hectare), depending on the soil and irrigation system,” he added.

The minister added farmers can sell their paddy this year from 950 riel to 1,100 riel per kilogramme. Therefore, through the seedling offering to the farmers, they can generate money up to $78 million.

Cambodia exported around 1.56 million tonnes of non-rice agricultural commodities with sanitary and phyto-sanitary certificates in the first two months of the year.

However, the exported paddy was 287,850 tonnes (a further 559,033 tonnes without sanitary certificates) in the same period.

On top of this, Cambodia’s exports of milled rice in the first two months of the year were valued at $64.53 million and amounted to 76,222 tonnes, according to a report from the Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF).

This was a decline of around 44.16 percent in January and February compared with the same period in 2020. The decrease was mainly because of a lack of containers and the continuing high cost of shipping via ocean freight. Those rates are up almost 500 percent over those of 2019. Khmer Times