The agriculture minister says he expects medium-quality rice production to dip slightly next year due to late planting as a result of the El Nino effect, and has urged farmers to plant wetland areas so as to mitigate the effects of the anticipated drought.

The minister last week predicted that this year’s third and last planting season, mostly on Java, would be delayed to November or December, about two months later than usual, because of lack of rainfall. As a result, national production would fall by about 1.6 million tons next year, or 2.6 percent of this year’s anticipated output of 62.5 million tons.

“Under normal conditions, there’s usually a harvest between January and February, as planting takes place between September and October. However, as planting will be delayed to November, we won’t have a harvest in the early part of next year,” Minister Anton Apriyantono said on Friday in Jakarta.

Many parts of Indonesia have two rice harvests a year, with some parts of Java enjoying three. The Agriculture Ministry had earlier estimated that El Nino could lead to the failure of some 50,000 hectares of rice next year. To reduce the impact, Anton urged farmers to plant marginal land, such as wetland areas, with rice during times of severe drought.

He said there were 915,469 hectares of wetland areas where rice could be grown during droughts, such as parts of South Sumatra, Lampung, South Kalimantan and West Kalimantan.

Despite the expected drop in production, Anton said domestic supplies were in no danger as a surplus was in the cards this year. According to the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), national output this year will amount to 62.5 million tons of unhusked rice, the equivalent of about 40 million tons of husked rice. This would give the country a surplus of 2.8 million tons of medium-quality rice by the end of the year.

“The rice surplus this year will be enough to cover the anticipated fall in production next year. So, our rice stocks will be sufficient to meet domestic demand and we won’t have to import any medium quality rice next year,” Anton said.

Given the likely fall in production, Anton said he would not recommend the issuing of export licenses for medium-quality rice. Ati Wasiati Hamid, the ministry’s director of food-crop protection, said earlier that El Nino was expected to reach its peak in August.

El Nino, meaning “little boy” in Spanish, is driven by an abnormal warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean, and creates havoc in weather patterns across the Asia-Pacific region. Warmer, moist weather moves toward the east, leaving drier weather in the western Pacific, resulting in drought conditions in Indonesia.