Some 50,600 families rely on agriculture in Central Java's worst-hit Bantul district and nearly two-thirds have either lost their houses or suffered severe damage to them, Ted Burke from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said.

"We're looking at a serious situation for these people," the operations officer, who is assessing the situation in Bantul, told AFP in an interview late Monday.

The number of families affected translates to some 250,000 affected people or 70 percent of Bantul's population. Nearly 5,800 Indonesians were killed in total by the May 27 quake. Of these, 4,280 were in Bantul.

"There is definitely a need for us to help the farmers because their lives have been so disrupted that there is no way they are going to be able to get the capital to get back to normal farming right away," he said.

"All the money they have now will not go into agricultural production but into rebuilding housing."

The island of Java is one of Indonesia's rice bowls, with the crop being planted three times a year -- in June, October and February. Other crops such as shallots are planted in July, while maize and groundnuts are in October.

"They will be in a fairly critical situation when it's time to replant again in June," he said. "They'll have no money for seed, fertilisers, tools and pesticides, which are their normal expenditures."

While unaffected farmers may help out with donations of rice for food, "the fact remains that the people affected by the earthquake are going to be in an economically disadvantaged situation and they will be dependent on outside support," he said.

Burke also warned farmers could be left unable to feed themselves when government and international food aid is phased out over the next three to six months.

"At the moment the government and organisations are here, but this is not going to last forever," he said.

"We don't want to get to the point when we are saying in three months we have to get to the ground because people have no aid."

Bantul's agricultural department, which offers veterinary and other services such as seed distribution and support for farmers, is dysfunctional and barely operating, he said.

"The agricultural department has been crippled. They only have 20 percent of staff working and the rest are trying to rebuild their lives. The 20 percent that are working are not involved in agriculture, but are involved in emergency activities," he said.

"It looks like they are in a pretty critical situation at the moment and they do not have the facilities or the manpower to take care of the agricultural sector."

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