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Scant Aid Reaching Burma's Delta
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The cyclone struck just as the region's paddy farmers were harvesting the dry-season crop, which accounts for about 25 percent of the country's annual production.
Paul Risley, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the storm destroyed some rice warehouses and their contents.
Experts are concerned about the next crop. "There is a question about the ability of the rice planters to get back to cultivation," Risley said. "They've got to put their houses back together first."
Even if the farmers do plant, their efforts may produce little. The tidal surge sent seawater as far as 35 miles inland, satellite photos show, depositing salt that could make the paddies infertile.
Sean Turnell, an expert on Burma at Australia's Macquarie University and editor of Burma Economic Watch, said the region's long-neglected colonial-era irrigation systems probably took a heavy blow as well. "Rice-growing depends on being able to distribute water properly," he said. "We have seen channels and dikes, which had been slowly degrading and silting up, inundated. One can only imagine the damage has been great."
"I think the overall projection is of incredible hardship," Turnell said. "In the short term, we are going to see real shortages -- and the price of rice is going to be very high."
Lynch reported from New York.
