Thai rice yield shrinks, coffee crops die in VN
Play
ACROSS MUCH of central and north-eastern Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta rice bowl, temperatures are soaring into the 40s, and are likely to stay there until around the middle of next month.
A second year of summer drought has been exacerbated by the El Nino effect. On Friday, Thailand’s meteorological office said a heatwave late this month or early next month would push temperatures to 43 or 44 degrees Celsius.
Vietnam’s coffee growers have suffered, as have Thailand’s rice farmers. But while a supply dip could raise coffee prices, rice prices might not be affected, analysts say.
Scientists say the good news is the El Nino effect will start fading towards the end of next month and annual monsoon rains will begin.
Meanwhile, in village after village, water tanks are dry, grass has withered and the ground is baked and cracked underfoot.
In some villages in northeastern Thailand, there has been no running water for weeks, and local fire brigades have been pressed into service to bring water from kilometres away. In many places here, for the second year running, there has been no second rice crop.
How bad the impact of the drought will be on agricultural output – not just of rice in Vietnam and Thailand but of commodities such as coffee in Vietnam – is still uncertain.
“This is not stopping here. It’s going to get worse and worse,” says Rolan Colieng, 28, as she looks at her coffee farm in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, where the family has had to cut down swathes of dried-out coffee trees.
