Myanmar's Cyclone-Damaged Rice Production Regions Monitored

[Sally Furniss]

Myanmar's Cyclone-Damaged Rice Production Regions Monitored with GIS

Subsequent to Cyclone Nargis, a category 3 tropical storm that struck the low-lying and heavily populated coastline of Myanmar on May 2, 2008, the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began producing a series of geographic information system (GIS)-based maps of the damaged agricultural areas to accompany its commodity intelligence reports.

Redlands, CA (PRWEB) July 9, 2008 -- Subsequent to Cyclone Nargis, a category 3 tropical storm that struck the low-lying and heavily populated coastline of Myanmar on May 2, 2008, the Foreign Agriculture Service (FAS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) began producing a series of geographic information system (GIS)-based maps of the damaged agricultural areas to accompany its commodity intelligence reports. Published on the FAS Web site.



The mission of FAS is to improve foreign market access to U.S. agricultural products, build new markets, improve the competitive position of U.S. agriculture in the global marketplace, and provide food aid and technical assistance to foreign countries. FAS achieves a part of this mission by analyzing global crop production capacity with remote-sensing and GIS tools and by issuing commodity intelligence reports highlighting current international crop conditions. GIS-based maps, available in PDF format, provide a visualization of the analysis performed and often serve as each report's basis.



The commodity intelligence reports issued for the country formerly known as Burma focus on Myanmar's major rice-producing areas, which have suffered salt water flooding and heavy rainfall as a result of the cyclone.

The project included satellite imagery obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA)
moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite to delineate the postcyclone flooding region.



This imagery was combined with rice land-cover classification data from the Landsat satellite program. FAS used ArcGIS to perform spatial analysis and create maps of the damaged rice production regions of Myanmar. These maps revealed the cyclone's effect on cropland and livestock, the severity of flooding, and the rate of cropland recovery. The United Nations and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) are using the maps to evaluate the scope of the cyclone's impact. The information is also been of great interest to the international agriculture industry for determining market impacts.



"Our GIS maps and flood classification data show that the areas originally inundated by the storm account for approximately 1.7 million hectares of rice, 24 percent of the national rice area, or roughly 2.5 million tons of rice production on a milled basis," says FAS international crop assessment analyst Michael Shean. "The core region most severely damaged by the tidal wave and high winds, however, accounted for approximately 900,000 hectares of rice land, 13 percent of the national rice area, and roughly 1.35 million tons of milled rice production. In addition, field reports from inside the affected region indicate that within these rice production areas, large numbers of villages were destroyed along with much of their food stocks, livestock, and farming supplies."



A commodity intelligence report and maps issued June 10, 2008, demonstrate that approximately 80 percent of the original inundated rice production area is still affected by some degree of flooding, though conditions in the core damage zone had improved considerably, with only 418,000 hectares, or 46 percent of the original area, still showing flood effects. FAS will continue to produce reports and maps and perform analysis of Myanmar's rice production regions as new data becomes available.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology...Production-Regions-Monitored-with-GIS-6459-1/

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Myanmar's Cyclone-Damaged Rice Production Regions Monitored with GIS

Re: Myanmar's Cyclone-Damaged Rice Production Regions Monitored with GIS

Cyclone-hit Myanmar rejects rice shortage fears
Aung Hla Tun

Reuters North American News Service
Jun 11, 2008 07:41 EST


YANGON, June 11 (Reuters) - Cyclone-hit Myanmar has enough rice to feed its people, the ruling junta said on Wednesday, accusing foreign aid agencies of presenting a false picture of the devastation in the Irrawaddy delta rice bowl.

In remarks reported by official media, National Planning Minister Soe Tha rejected warnings that the former Burma's food security could be "jeopardised" if delta farmers cannot plant a new rice crop by the end of July.

"Some organisations were spreading groundless information such as there is or will be a shortage of rice in Myanmar," Soe Tha was quoted as saying at a meeting with international relief agencies on Tuesday.

"We have enough rice and we can distribute sufficiently," he said, although the newspaper reports did not give a detailed picture of the country's rice supplies.


The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said on Tuesday Myanmar's rice crop will be smaller than expected after the May 2 cyclone, which flooded paddy fields with seawater, damaged irrigation systems and destroyed supplies of rice seed.

The USDA cut its previous crop forecast by 600,000 tonnes to 9.4 million tonnes to reflect "a reduction in area and an expected decline in average yield due to the effects of the storm damage from Cyclone Nargis in early May."


Last week, the U.N. food agency said of the 1.3 million ha (3.2 million acres) of paddy in the cyclone-hit areas, 60 percent was affected by the storm.


About 200,000 ha (500,000 acres) were too damaged for planting, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said.
Nearly six weeks since the storm left 134,000 dead or missing and another 2.4 million people destitute, some paddy land has been drained of seawater.


But farmers still faced many hurdles to planting the monsoon crop, including a lack of shelter, rice seed, fertiliser and ploughing animals, most of which were killed.

"If this is not done in a timely manner, poor farmers, who have already lost their assets, will suffer from hunger and poverty for a long time, while national food security will be seriously jeopardised," the FAO said.

RICE IMPORTS

Myanmar was the world's largest rice exporter when it won independence from Britain in 1948, but lost that title to neighbouring Thailand after four decades of military rule and disastrous economic policies.

With little money to buy other food, people in Myanmar consume an average 44 lbs (20 kg) of rice per month, compared to 35 lbs in Vietnam and 15 lbs in Asia as a whole, the FAO said.


The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which was feeding 2 million people in Myanmar before the cyclone, has sought to buy food locally to feed a minimum of 750,000 people in the delta.


"We may have to continue assistance in the delta for six months or until the next harvest," WFP spokesman Paul Risley told Reuters.

"We will continue to purchase food locally but we will likely have to seek imports of food stocks, especially rice to replace rice that was lost in the delta," he said.

The WFP recently signed a local contract for 10,000 tonnes of rice, corn, beans, lentils and other pulses -- roughly six weeks of food assistance.

It also received 400 tonnes of rice from a French naval ship that was not allowed to deliver aid directly to Myanmar.

(Additional reporting and writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Ed Cropley and Jeremy Laurence)

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