Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Manian should be planting his next rice crop now, but more than two weeks after Myanmar’s devastating cyclone he is still too busy trying to get basic food and shelter for his family.

His dilemma is a common one across a vast swathe of the agricultural south that was hit in the disaster, which destroyed rice paddies, drowned buffaloes used for ploughing and ruined stocks of grain and seed.

With a global food crisis in full swing, experts warn that the problems ahead could be enormous for a country already reeling from the devastation of Cyclone Nargis.

“If we could start to plough the land early, we could increase the crop. But I need to find food for my family,” says the 48-year-old farmer, standing amid the wreckage of his village of Kyuaktan.

He needs $100 to buy seed and fertiliser — an impossible sum for him to pull together even at the best of times.

“I have to buy new seeds,” Manian says. “All my seeds are wet, and I can’t use them.”

The cyclone has left two million survivors short of food, clean water, shelter and even cooking pots and basic tools, and aid groups say the relief effort has been hampered by the government’s restriction on foreign experts.

But one of the darkest problems on the horizon is the next rice harvest, which will be essential to keep a massive food shortage at bay. The Irrawaddy Delta hit hardest by the storm is the impoverished country’s rice bowl.

“Extensive damage to agriculture production risks the loss of the November harvest,” the United Nations said in a new internal report on the situation Sunday, warning that planting had to be carried out within seven weeks.

“If this planting season is lost, then assistance will be required for some months to come.”

The UN’s food agency has already warned that more than 20 per cent of rice paddies in the cyclone hit area, including districts outside Yangon and the delta region.

An intricate system of embankments and irrigation systems critical to the success of the crop will require an enormous amount of work to restore — work by people who are grieving, homeless and weak from hunger.

“Time is running out. We are working against the clock,” said Diderik de Vleeschauwer, a spokesman for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Bangkok.

“If rice seed is not received within the next 40 to 50 days, planting will not happen in time for the harvesting this year.”

The aftermath of catastrophe is expected to exhaust those stocks of rice that were not already soaked and ruined by the driving rain and enormous tidal surge generated by the cyclone.

In the days after the storm hit, villagers scratched the precious grains from demolished huts and laid them out on the road to dry, saving what they could.

But much was beyond salvaging.

“The country may turn from a rice exporter into a rice-importing country. Myanmar may need to turn to neighbouring countries such as Thailand for rice imports,” de Vleeschauwer said.

The European Union’s humanitarian aid chief Louis Michel said last week that Myanmar was at risk of famine.

The international community has been pushing the junta to open its doors to a full-scale emergency response, overseen by international experts that aid groups say are critical to the success of the operation.

While the negotiations continue, some relief agencies and charities are already embarking on the longer-term task of rehabilitation.

The FAO said Myanmar government officials had reported they needed 243 million dollars to buy seed and fertiliser and to repair farms, and another 20 million to replace and care for livestock.

“The cyclone hit five states which are predominantly agricultural societies,” it said. “The five states produce 65 per cent of the country’s rice.”