It has been one and a half year after Nargis hit the Delta of Irrawaddy. The Delta farmers are living hand to mouth while trying to get back on their feet despite their losses. Shortly after Nargis, the farmers of Irrawaddy have quickly cultivated their land. Their struggle continues to this date as they observe several matters that deny their profiting from the harvest and hamper their recovery; such as diminishing harvest, increased use of fertilizers, erratic rains, strong winds, insurmountable debts and low market prices of the rice.

Reduced Soil Quality
The farmers noted that the harvest from their land becomes less and less year by year. In addition, the plot of land also needs more and more fertilizers compared to previous cultivating seasons. The land salinity cause by cyclone Nargis is one of the suspect of reduced soil quality besides land overuse and land erosion.

Changing Weather
During October-November 2008 and March-April 2009, Myanmar experienced strong winds that collapsed houses and irregular rains. The latter has impacted the quantity of rice yields and post-harvest losses considerably.  The farmers noted that the monsoon season of 2009 is late for 2-3 weeks as the water was still saline at the time of cultivation and the rain came late as well, thus resulting loss of cultivated seeds and the farmers had to put in more seeds as inputs.

Market Instability
In a country like Myanmar, where free-market economy that enables fair competition to take place, farmers cannot obtain proper and fair price fortheir harvest. Skyrocketed prices of farming inputs and forever-low paddy price lead to marginalized profit for farmers despite good harvest.

Insurmountable Debts
As cyclone Nargis wiped out the majority of farmers’ assets, they could not repay the money they borrowed to secure farming inputs and other needs with monthly interest rate of 6-20%. A lot of money lenders forced the farmers to sign a contract that double the debts or asked farmers to repay their debts by giving up their valuable assets such as house, land, jewelries and cattle.

Assistance from Church World Service Asia Pacific and International Development Enterprise Myanmar has enabled farmers to repay significant portions of their debts. However, in areas with unfavorable yields due to erratic weather, soil salinity and pest infestations, farmers have lost their most valuable assets such as land and house to solve their debt problems.