Food availability to be curtailed in Myammar without rapid aid for farmers, UN agency warns

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Thursday cautioned that without swift assistance for Myanmar's farmers, "the availability of food will be severely limited," a UN spokesman told reporters here.

"Heavy storms, floods and landslides across nearly all of the country's provinces have dealt a major blow to the country's agriculture," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

Myanmar has experienced a month of extreme weather, worsened by the arrival of Cyclone Komen at the end of July, with more than 1.6 million people being adversely affected and more than 1.4 million acres of farmland inundated.

"With the water now receding, the Food and Agriculture Organization stressed the need to act quickly to help rural communities get back on their feet," he said.

The flood disaster in Myanmar since June has brought the death toll nationwide to 88 and affected more than 330,000 people across the nation, prompting a state of emergency for urgent relief efforts.

According to the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, most of the deaths were reported in western Rakhine state with at least 55 deaths there.

The deadly flood also killed 4,650 cattle, displaced 85,400 people and destroyed 10,956 homes and more than 88,120 hectares of farmland.

The Myanmar Rice Federation has decided to halt rice export until Sept. 15 for domestic reserve in face of the severe flood. The one-and-a-half-month freeze on export is said to ensure an adequate supply of rice for the domestic market and to maintain stability of rice prices.

Export will not be done unless rice supply is sufficient for domestic market during the period, said the federation leadership, adding that a total of 170,000 bags of rice will be purchased from private sector to be stored as reserve for local self-sufficiency. Endit