Money
Paddy output seen falling 18pc due to natural disasters
Nepal’s paddy output is expected to drop at least 18 percent due to damage caused by landslides and floods making this fiscal year’s targeted 6 percent growth unachievableAccording to the department’s preliminary estimates, floods and landslides in different parts of the country have wiped out up to 35,040 hectares of paddy fields including fish ponds and other crops. The loss created by floods and landslides in 17 districts is estimated to be around Rs 1.91 billion.
Government officials said that these two unfavourable climatic behaviours are likely to affect output at a time when paddy transplantation has been progressing at a very slow rate across the country due to untimely and insufficient rains.
As of now, paddy transplantation has been completed on less then 90 percent of the 1.52 million hectares available for paddy production. In the same period last year, transplantation was completed on 98 percent of the paddy fields.
“The floods, landslides and untimely rains are estimated to bring down paddy output by 15-18 percent this year,” said Yubak Dhoj GC, director general of the Department of Agriculture. The agriculture sector accounts for 36 percent of the country’s GDP and paddy’s share alone stands at around 8 percent.
The Agricultural Ministry’s statistics showed that paddy transplantation in the mountain and hill regions has been completed on 94.5 percent and 93 percent of the fields. Transplantation in the Tarai region, the country’s food basket, has been completed on 85.5 percent of the total 1.06 million hectares as of last week.
Ministry officials have estimated that transplantation will not cross 90 percent this year. “Even if the plants are transplanted after the last week of August, paddy yields will be affected.”
The department’s statistics compiled since mid-July showed that floods and landslides in 17 districts, including in high rice-productivity districts Banke, Kailali, Kanchanpur, Bardia, Sarlahi and Surkhet, destroyed significant amounts of paddy beds and affected standing cereal crops like maize, mustard and millet. More than 29,000 households in 222 VDCs have been affected by the natural calamities.
Sindhupalchok, Rautahat, Sarlahi and Ramechhap in the Mid-Western Region have been the most hit with almost 17,365 hectares of cultivated land destroyed by floods and landslides. Likewise, 16,032 hectares have been damaged in Banke, Bardia and Surkhet in the Mid-Western Region.
This year the monsoon arrived 10 days late on June 20 and the rains have been dismal so far.
Nepal’s paddy output dropped 11.3 percent to 4.50 million tonnes in the fiscal year 2012-13 due to drought that resulted in a meagre growth of 1.07 percent in the agricultural sector. The poor agricultural output resulted in the economic growth rate plunging to a six-year low of 3.56 percent, the lowest since fiscal 2006-07 when growth was 2.75 percent.
However, there was a slight relief when the average rainfall during the paddy transplantation season in 2013-14 rose above normal to 115.3 mm that resulted in a good cereal harvest. Accordingly, cereal output jumped 9.4 percent to 9.56 million tonnes.
The overall growth in cereal production led to the agricultural sector swelling 4.72 percent in the last fiscal year that helped the country’s economic growth to rise over 5 percent, the highest since 2008-09.