TEMPO.CO, Kupang – Silvia Peku Djawang, the head of Food Insecurity of Food Security and Counseling Body of East Nusa Tenggara, said the province’s rice supplies had been depleted due to prolonged drought.
“The supplies are only sufficient to meet demands for another four months,” Silvia told Tempo on Tuesday, September 2, 2014.
Silvia said the province’s rice supplies presently stood at 205,502 tons and they would only last for around 4.4 months given the province’s monthly rice demands of 46,709 tons.
She added other food supplies such as corn, meanwhile, were at 104,419 tons with monthly demands of 8,222 tons and would have been completely exhausted in around 12.7 months. Tubers supplies, she went on, would be out in five months, while soybean supplies at 570 tons would only last for 0.8 month to meet monthly demands of 713 tons.
Silvia said the province was bound to suffer from food insecurity when the dry season climaxed in December this year and January 2015. If that’s the case, she added, the province would have to use 80.36 tons of its food reserves to cope with it.
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