By Darren Schuettler BANGKOK, June 4 (Reuters) - The World Food Programme might need to import rice for its aid programmes in cyclone-hit Myanmar where farmers in the Irrawaddy delta rice bowl are struggling to plant a new crop, a spokesman said on Wednesday. The U.N. food agency, which provided food aid in northern and central parts of Myanmar before the May 2 cyclone, could also have a presence in the delta for up to a year, WFP spokesman Paul Risley told reporters. "The losses to production of rice in this area are very specific and very deep," he said, adding "it would be very typical for the World Food Programme to continue providing food rations for farmers in the delta certainly through the next six months and next harvest." The WFP is still supplying extra rations of rice and other food in coastal areas of Bangladesh seven months after Cyclone Sidr killed nearly 3,500 people. "This cyclone was of even greater magnitude," Risley said of Cyclone Nargis, which left 134,000 dead or missing and another 2.4 million destitute in Myanmar. The agency has delivered 8,500 tonnes of food to cyclone-hit areas and aims to supply 750,000 people over the next six months. The WFP, which tries to buy locally, signed a contract in Myanmar last week for 10,000 tonnes of rice, corn, beans, lentils and other pulses -- roughly six weeks of food assistance. It also received clearance from the junta to import 400 tonnes rice from a French naval ship docked in Thailand that was not allowed to deliver aid directly to Myanmar. But more imports might be needed if farmers in the five disaster zones, including the main rice-producing delta, cannot plant the monsoon crop by the end of July, when 80 percent of the country's rice is normally grown. "At some point in August it is likely that we would have to address this issue," Risley told Reuters. "It doesn't mean we would stop buying locally, but we may have to import." The cyclone affected 60 percent of the 1.3 million hectares (3.2 million acres) of rice paddy in the five disaster areas, but only 16 percent was "seriously damaged", the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a preliminary assessment. Some land had been drained of seawater, but farmers still faced many hurdles to planting a new crop in the next 60 days. These included lack of shelter, rice seeds, 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. Donors have offered $20 million in aid, well short of Myanmar's appeal for $243 million to fix damaged paddy fields, irrigation systems and get farmers back on the land. But it will cover urgent needs such as buying rice seeds in Myanmar, some of which will be delivered to farmers in a few weeks, the FAO's deputy regional representative, Hiroyuki Konuma, said. The FAO may also import chemical fertiliser from Thailand, but urea prices there have doubled in the past six months, he said. (Editing by Ed Davies)
Farmers sun wheat on a threshing floor in Xiangfan, Hubei province June 4, 2008. The China National Grain and Oils Information Centre on Wednesday raised its estimate for China's 2008 wheat ...
