This year's UN crop survey in North Korea is likely to be scuttled again for the fourth consecutive year due to no request to carry out the audit from the reclusive country, a US broadcaster said Tuesday.
The North Korean authorities have yet to make any request for a harvest survey to the Food and Agriculture Organization this year, Voice of America said, citing an e-mail from FAO spokeswoman Sandra Ferrari.
A North Korean man waters a dried-up field by mobilizing a fire truck during a severe drought in this photo captured from the North`s Korean Central TV on June 26, 2017. (Yonhap)
The FAO and World Food Program jointly carried out crop surveys once or twice a year in the poverty-stricken nation from 1995 until 2013, although the inspections were suspended four times during that period. But the UN organizations dispatched their on-site inspection teams to the North only when it made such requests.
Given that a yield survey is usually conducted right before or during harvest, survey teams should enter the North no later than the end of the month, as the corn harvest there begins around mid-September, according to the broadcaster.
However, North Korea has so far made no survey request, it added. (Yonhap)
