A GOVERNMENT rice-farming agency has stepped up precautionary measures to ensure sufficient irrigation for padi farmers, as the country’s rice fields on the northern peninsula grapple with exceptionally dry weather for the first time in 40 years.

Mobile water pumps and cloud seeding are among measures being rolled out by the Muda Agricultural Development Authority (Mada), which oversees most of the rice-planting in Kedah and Perlis.

There is enough dam water, for now, to irrigate fields until February, but farmers are warned to be judicious in their use of water the three dams in the area are low on water due to the arid spell.

If the supply from the Pedu dam drops to reaches 27% of capacity, priority will be given to the household consumers, said the agency.

The Pedu dam supplies water to households and farms in northern and central Kedah

“For now, there are no areas under Mada that have been severely affected by the drought. This is due to measures that we are actively taking,” the agency said in a statement to The Malaysian Insight.

“Water supply for rice growing is expected to proceed according to the rice planting schedule for the second season of 2019, until February 17, 2020.”

Mada has deployed 821 mobile pumps to affected fields and fully activated 155 pump stations to provide recycled water.

“Rotational irrigation is being done to reduce the rate of water we are releasing from the dams and presently we are releasing 113.2m3 from the Pedu dam.”

Mada has also started working with the Meteorology Department on cloud-seeding, said the agency, which oversees and assists about 56,000 rice farmers in the Kedah-Perlis region and provides them with technical advice, fertilisers, herbicides and irrigation.

Thanks to Mada’s irrigation system, farmers in the Kedah-Perlis region are able to plant twice a year, the first time in March to July and the second, in September to January.

But exceptionally dry weather had disrupted 2019’s second planting season as the rains, which usually persist from November to March, suddenly stopped in December.

Kedah and Perlis have a combined 150,000ha of padi fields, providing 47% of the nation’s demand for rice. Mada oversees 100,856ha of those rice fields.

Unusually dry weather has hit Kedah and Perlis, leaving to up to 4,000 farmers in Kubang Pasu and Padang Besar without water to irrigate their fields.

In a statement, Mada said the current planting season usually depended on heavy rains from the northeast monsoon but this year, rainfall was drastically reduced from to the annual average of the past 40 years.

“The weather in the Muda area has been quite dry where rainfall has been reduced. From November 2019 to now there has only been 1,645mm of rain compared to 2018 when volume of rainfall was 2,036mm.”

The reduced rainfall has also resulted in lower water levels in three dams, Pedu, Muda and Ahning that supply water for homes, businesses and farms in Kedah and Perlis.

As of press time, the water level in the Pedu dam is 50.18%, Muda at 26.72% and Ahning at 64.47%.

Agriculture Minister Salahuddin Ayob is expected to visit the region this week to disclose more aid to the farmers affected by dought. – January 11, 2020.