|
|
News |
Farmers in Ye Township forced to harvest paddy prematurely, yields down
Mon 03 Nov 2008,
IMNA
Farmers in southern Mon State are being forced to prematurely harvest their paddy crop so that they can begin the mandatory hot-season planting, say local sources.
According to a farmer with a field between Abaw and Duya villages in Ye Township, farmers in his area are grumbling because the village headman ordered them to harvest on October 25th, before the paddy was ripe. The area is home to at least 200 rice paddy plots.
“I think I will get at least 25 baskets per acre in this year because the rice is not [fully ripe]. I got 50 baskets from the same acres in the last year,” the farmer said.
Some farmers whose land is far from roads have been able to avoid the scrutiny of regime officials, the farmer added.
One prominent resident of the area, the secretary of Duya village, has refused to harvest early, saying he will harvest when his paddy crop is fully matured. The Ye Township chairman has threatened to dismiss him from his position, although he has not been dismissed as of this writing.
The forced harvest appears to be an outgrowth of the junta’s “Two Crops Policy,” which loosely dates back to the Ne Win administration. According to a former manager from the Myanmar Agricultural Service, the junta has been encouraging farmers to plant a hot season crop since 1962, and forcing farmers to do so since 1973.
According to government statistics, the summer crop grows from November to April and is harvested from March to June, a timetable which is undoubtedly motivating the order behind the early harvest.
Though the goal of the Two Crops Policy has been to double Burma’s annual rice output, the drastically increased yields have failed to materialize. Many places are just not suited to growing rice in the hot season. Farmers have been forced to plant hot season crops anyway, trapping many in cycles of debt as they spend income from the wet season harvest on a hot season crop that hardly materializes.
According to Nai Soe, a farmer from Mon State, “If we profited from growing summer paddy, groundnut, and sun flowers, the government would not need to force us to cultivate. We would cultivate even if they didn’t tell us to.”
|
|
|
