YANGON – Nearly all the rice fields in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady delta that were devastated by Cyclone Nargis in May have been replanted, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said last week.

At a ceremony at the Singapore embassy in Yangon to hand over 38,000 bags of fertiliser, FAO resident representative Shin Imai said 97 percent of all damaged paddy in the delta had been replanted by the end of August.

Aid agencies had feared that failure to sow rice in most of the affected areas in time for the main crop in the second half of the year would create a long-term dependency on food aid in a country that used to be the world’s largest rice exporter.

The FAO said in June that of 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of rice fields in the cyclone hit areas, 60pc was affected by the storm.

The Singaporean fertiliser – enough for 62,000 ha of paddy – is due to be delivered to affected farmers shortly.

The Myanmar government’s Agriculture Minister, Major General Htay Oo, said damage to the farming sector had been almost completely repaired and there would be no impact from the cyclone on rice production.

“We urgently took necessary actions with the assistance of the UN and international organisations, NGOs and INGOs’,” he told reporters.

The US Department of Agriculture estimated in June that Myanmar’s overall rice crop would be smaller than expected after the May 2 cyclone. The category three cyclone flooded paddy fields with sea water, damaged irrigation systems and destroyed seed supplies.

The storm left 134,000 people dead or missing, making it one of the deadliest cyclones to hit Asia.

– Reuters