Southern Winter-Spring rice crop area down due to floods. Illustrative image. (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – Southern localitieshave planted about 764,500 hectares of the Winter-Spring rice crops so far thisyear, down 14.4 percent from the same period last year as flood water recededslowly.
More than 98 percent of the areas weregrown in the Mekong Delta, a year-on-year decrease of 11.6 percent, accordingto the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
Last year, the region saw a 0.4-percentfall in areas of the Autumn-Winter rice crops due to floods but each hectare yielded180kg higher year-on-year to 5,220kg of rice. It brought the totaloutput up to 4.02 million tonnes of rice, an increase of 3.2 percent.
The northern also experienced asignificant decline in areas of the Winter crops, particularly those do notrequire much water like peanut and soya, due to lengthy heavy rains triggeredby typhoons Pakhar and Mawar in late August and early September that have affectedfarmers sowing.
The areas of maize, sweet potato andsoya fell by 15.6 percent, 34 percent and 29.8 percent, respectively, over thesame period last year.
The ministry warned that the extremeweather may cause outbreaks of disease in the current Winter-Spring rice crops.-VNA
VNA
