Seawater Infiltration, Cyclone Impacts Drive 90% Rice Crop Losses In Bangaldesh Delta

[hatrack]

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Worsening sea water storm surges and overuse of irrigation have left fields, wells and ponds in parts of southern Bangladesh too salty to grow crops, leading to a growing exodus of farmers from the region.

During Cyclones Sidr and Aila, in 2007 and 2009, sea water was driven into ponds and rivers in Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira districts in southern Bangladesh, and some fields remained flooded by sea water long enough to raise levels of salinity in the soil and in underground aquifers used for irrigation.

Now farmers on hundreds of thousands of acres in the region are watching their rice crops wither and die before reaching maturity. In some cases, farmers have sown rice plants several times in a season but seen none survive.

Binoy Singh, a farmer in Surigati village in Bagerhat district, recently lost nearly his entire 10-acre rice crop to salt contamination. "The pond, the river and the groundwater contain excess salt. Salinity in the land has risen too much. The plants became red and dried up after some days of cultivation," he said. "Some two years back we were cultivating rice with water from the river and deep tube wells. But now the salinity of the water from these sources has gone above the permissible level for rice production," he said.

EDIT

http://www.alertnet.org/db/an_art/60167/2010/04/13-221838-1.htm

[AlecBGreen]

1. ugh

can you imagine the feeling of watching 10 acres of hand-planted rice die not once but twice!?

[kestrel91316]

2. OTOH, all those flooded croplands will make great wetland fish nurseries......

[Dead_Parrot]

3. 90%!? Fuck. nt