Vietnam's cold spell destroys rice crops
HANOI - Vietnam's longest cold spell in 18 years has destroyed a third of the early
winter-spring rice crop, state media said yesterday.
Cold weather which began on Dec 26 has destroyed a total of 10,000 ha of rice
crops across 32 northern provinces.
In Thai Binh province,
south-east of Hanoi, as
much as a third of early rice
seedlings were wiped out,
the state-run Viet Nam News
reported.
Meteorologists say the cold
spell is the earliest and
longest the country has
seen since 1984-85.
Temperatures in some parts
of the mountainous border
provinces of Lao Cai and
Lang Son have plunged to
minus 6 deg C.
In spite of the horrific
weather, Mr Tong Khiem,
deputy head of the
agriculture and rural
development ministry's agro-forestry department, blamed the losses on farmers
failing to heed warnings to sow their seedlings earlier than usual.
He also chastised them for not covering their crop with nylon sheets to guard
against frost.
However, he said the situation was tempered by the fact that between 80 and 90
per cent of the winter-spring rice harvest traditionally comes from seedlings
planted after the week-long Lunar New Year festival of Tet, which this year begins
on Feb 1.
The country's main rice crop occurs during the summer-autumn season.
Vietnam's rice farming sector has undergone a major transformation in the past
decade, taking the country from being a net importer of rice before 1989 to the
world's third biggest exporter last year.
Agence France Presse - January 11, 2003.
|