Hundreds Of Hectares Of Rice Fields In Bombana Failed To Harvest

Rainy rice fields in Tanah Bite Village, Lantari Jaya Bombana District failed to harvest (puso). (Intermediate Photo/HO- Bombana Agricultural Extension Officer)

KENDARI - Hundreds of hectares of rain and irrigation rice fields in Lantari Jaya District, North Rarowatu, Bombana Regency, Southeast Sulawesi (Sultra) failed to harvest due to the difficulty of getting water due to drought that hit the area.

According to information from several farmers in Tanah Bite Village, Lantari Jaya District, it was stated that of the area of 696 rice fields in the area, more than 300 hectares had failed in total, aka not getting any results.

"This year's rice plant failed completely (puso), because the age of rice plants has only increased by one and two months into the dry season. So that new plants will start bearing fruit no longer with rainwater, as a result, drought," said Undin, a farmer in the village, as reported by ANTARA, Tuesday, October 10.

The same thing was expressed by Anton, who has a rice field area of 1.5 hectares, admitted that he still had time to get the harvest of 10 sacks of unhulled rice, because it was early in planting rice and still had time to get rain water at that time.

"The normal harvest production is an average of 5-7 tons per hectare. However, with a long dryness that only expects water from the sky, this year it will fail completely," he said.

Officer of the Lantari Jaya District Agriculture Extension Officer, Jamaluddin Usman, who was confirmed separately, said the crop failure due to the long dry season this year was almost evenly distributed in the Bombana area.

Of the nine villages in Lantari Jaya sub-district, which experienced the worst crop failure in Tanah Bite Village because the area was indeed difficult to get water, even though it had been tried to drill wells but again failed to get a spring, and only hoped for rain.

"In several other villages, there is still time to harvest but production varies. Some are still harvesting above 5-6 tons because apart from the faster planting season, they are also assisted by pump wells at several points in the area," he said.

Jamaluddin said that the failure to harvest agricultural rice fields is if they only get production below 20 percent of normal production.

"So the farmers who only get 10-15 sacks of rice per hectare have been categorized as crop failure," he said.