As Cyclone Nargis tore through the Irrawaddy Delta in May, it destroyed thousands of homes, schools, monasteries, and public buildings, killing nearly 150,000 people. The UN estimates that nearly 2.4 million individuals were directly impacted by the storm. In Burma, a country where 70% of poor families live in rural areas and make their living by cultivating small plots of land, the brunt of that impact fell disproportionately on farmers and agricultural workers.
Although government mismanagement has caused the country’s rice output to decline steadily since 1962, Burma is still self-sufficient in rice production, with commitments to export around 600,000 tons of rice in 2008. The damage left in the Nargis’s wake, however, means that Burma will not be able to fulfill its international exporting contracts and may have to import rice instead.
The five storm-affected areas – Irrawaddy, Rangoon, and Bago Divisions, and Mon and Kayin States – produce 65% of Burma’s rice. The cyclone made landfall just as farmers were harvesting the winter dry-season crop, which makes up about a quarter of Burma’s annual production. Wet-season planting should have begun in July, but after the storm many farmers lacked adequate shelter, food, and potable water, to say nothing of the resources required to cultivate a crop. The USDA Foreign Agricultural service projects that salinity damage to land, debris left by the storm, damage to irrigation infrastructure, and loss of seed stocks, fertilizers, machinery, and farm animals will cause more than a million acres of rice paddy to go unsown during the summer wet-season.
This dramatic reduction in rice output has serious consequences not only for Burma’s already-struggling economy, but also for the individual farmers and agricultural laborers who depend on rice as a staple food and the center of their livelihoods. The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that Burma’s continuing and deeply entrenched food insecurity, combined with growing population pressures, soil infertility, declining crop yields, and rising costs of food and farm implements meant that rural families had little, if any, cushion before the storm hit. Farmers who own land may lose portions of their small holdings if they default on debts during difficult times. Landless workers, who earn less than $1 a day, make nothing when the market for agricultural labor collapses. As a result, the FAO estimates that without intervention, hundreds of thousands of cyclone survivors will be dependent on food aid until the next major rice harvest in 2009. Even then, the loss of seed stocks washed away in the storm could mean continued rice shortages and food insecurity years into the future.
Foundation for the People of Burma recognized the need for a well-planned, community-based program to rehabilitate rice production systems in the Delta. We used our on-the-ground connections to identify 19 villages in need of assistance, and we worked quickly to establish committees comprised of farmers, businesspeople, teachers, and other community leaders in each one. FPB staff helped to ensure gender parity on the committees and facilitated discussions in which the groups decided on their missions and charters.
Each committee then used its mission, which was designed to value the contributions of landless laborers, to decide how to spend a small grant given by FPB. So far, projects and initiatives funded by the committees have focused on rice cultivation. FPB grants have helped committees to purchase hundreds of bushels of rice seed, 40 tractors, and enough fuel to run them. The 19 villages restored more than 5,000 acres of paddy in time for wet-season planting. The committees also bought special bins, drums, and silos to protect harvested rice, seed stocks, and seedlings from future floods.
Profits from the rice harvest are reinvested into the committee fund, which is used to support new community projects. An FPB staff member writes, “There are so many things they would like to buy… Sometimes it is difficult because they have rarely been asked about their hopes for the future.” Possible purchases include fruit tree seedlings and garden vegetables; poultry and pigs; draught animals to help with rice cultivation; water pumps; rice reaping, threshing, and hulling equipment; and fishing boats and nets.
To ensure the viability of long-term goals, FPB works with the village committees on conflict resolution and financial literacy. We hope that by providing information on equitable decision-making, budgeting, small business planning, and saving for the future, communities will be able to fulfill their often-expressed desire to “stand on their own two feet,” independent of humanitarian aid.
Our efforts have improved the food security of over 1,000 families as they are able to increase their food production beyond pre-cyclone levels. The creation of work and income, fueled by the villagers’ own ingenuity and commitment, has reduced reliance on outside assistance and provided the foundation for greater self-sufficiency and resilience. As we designed the rice rehabilitation program, we researched the mental health effects of natural disasters and found that many studies suggest survivor-designed emergency response plans – like ours – may help to reduce the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in disaster-affected communities, because these programs give participants a renewed sense of control over their lives.
By strengthening community support networks already in place and encouraging committee members to prioritize local needs, FPB hopes to ensure successful and sustainable improvements in the lives of every villager. We look forward to the continuation of our investment in these 19 villages and congratulate our partners on their success!
