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Excess heat risk to hinder rice production at national level

Across the entire Lao PDR, there could be yield loss due to high temperatures during the flowering stage, but rainfall conditions are expected to be average.

Abundant care in water management for paddies is critical to avoid possible water shortages due to high temperatures while noting the elevated risk of insect pestilence.

Estimated rice growing seasons start, and end dates differ by province.

Drough risk in Bokeo and Xayabouly

Bokeo and Xayabouly are expected to experience drought conditions between May and July, due to expected high temperatures and scarce rainfall in the two Lao provinces.

The drought conditions expected in Bokeo and Xayabouly are set to bring to potential rice yield loss as water shortages might affect initial tillering and flowering stages. Farmers in these provinces should be aware of this risk and implement water-saving practices.

Such conditions are also prone to increased risk of insect pests’ presence, such as plant hopper, thrip, and stem borer.

The preparatory activities

These are among the forecasts as the Department of Meteorology and Hydrology (DMH) staff continue their work with Laos Climate Services for Agriculture (LaCSA).The May to July forecast is critical for the initial rice season planning and the selection of varieties.

The information has been analyzed and findings produced by staff while home-based and during the COVID-19 lockdown in the Lao PDR.

Amid the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions on movement to mitigate its spread, Lao government officials have continued to work remotely on the FAO project “Strengthening Agro-climatic Monitoring and Information Systems (SAMIS)” as they continue on their path to becoming senior experts in agro-climatology and agro-meteorology.

This work has seen the update of seasonal forecasts for farmers over the next six months to which staff of the Department of Agricultural Land Management (DALAM) and the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) have contributed. 

DALAM has created a soil and crop calendar database, while NAFRI has produced the crop seasonal advisory by undertaking soil water modeling. These two sources of information are merged to produce published bulletin recommendations for rice farmers, available by the province

The bulletins by province are available at the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/samisdmh.

Next steps

These efforts can improve farmers’ food security, bring innovation and change in the agricultural practices to respond to climate change, and increase farmers’ existing capacity to adapt to climate change and expected conditions in time for the next cropping season. An improved version of LaCSA with advanced features and improved farmer recommendations is expected to come online by the end of May 2020.###

For more information about the SAMIS project, please check at http://www.fao.org/in-action/samis/en/. The temporary LaCSA URL is at http://147.46.250.219:8081/.