LABUTTA (Myanmar) - RICE-PLANTING season is just weeks away, but farmers are not rushing back to the corpse-strewn fields of the Myanmar delta ruined in the cyclone.

They are focused on more immediate needs, such as getting food and shelter - trying to rebuild their houses and their lives.

But in monasteries where the storm's survivors have taken refuge, rumours swirl that Myanmar's military rulers are offering free animals for those who return home.

'If so, I might go back to the village to work on my farm,' he said.

Such promises are not enough to sway many of the 2.4 million people the United Nations estimates were left hungry, homeless or sick after Cyclone Nargis enveloped the south-west rice-growing region in early May.

'I have no idea where I will go,' said one young mother, as she breast-fed her child.

'I don't have a home to go back to. I don't dare to go back to the village, as I heard that there were still many dead bodies.'

A total of 133,000 were left dead or missing across the storm zone.

Just south-east of the economic hub Yangon, farmers in Kyauktan village were busy trying to rebuild their homes, with little thought of heading out to the rice fields, many of which were still soaked in stagnant water.

'It is the planting season now, but most of the farmers are not working on their land. Many have lost their homes, their cows and buffaloes, and they do not have rice grain to plant,' one villager said.

'They need to rebuild their homes and find food for their family.'

The vast paddy fields surrounding the village were almost empty, with only one man and his son leading a pair of buffalo through the fields.

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has said that time is running out to get the rice in the ground, with planting season due to start in June. Food stocks were ruined when the wind and waves pummelled farm land.

'Urgent assistance is needed to help Myanmar's devastated agricultural sector in the heavily-hit Irrawaddy Delta recover,' Mr He Changchui, the FAO's regional director, said in a statement.

'There is a very narrow window of opportunity to provide seeds and other inputs to farmers so that next season's rice harvest, which helps to feed millions of people, will not be lost.'

To achieve this, aid agencies say, more money needs to be injected into the farming sector, and the junta needs to free up access for aid and the relief workers who can deliver it, many of whom have been refused visas.

Ms Penny Lawrence, international director of British aid group Oxfam, said the junta on Thursday laid out a detailed plan of the US$10.7 billion (S$14.5 billion) they were hoping to get from the international community.

Rehabilitation of the rice paddies featured highly in their wish-list, she said, which is expected to be presented to foreign donors at a conference in Yangon on Sunday.

'Thinking about the long-term rice production is absolutely critical,' Ms Lawrence told reporters in Bangkok.

Myanmar's government has put the cost of regenerating the agriculture industry at US$243 million, with US$25 million needed for livestock, the FAO has reported.

Ms Lawrence said the junta had given an usually detailed picture of the suffering of livestock, telling relief experts that 1,250,194 chickens and 136,804 buffalo were wiped out in the cyclone. -- AFP

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