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The fisherman of this region are famous for their leg-rowing technique, standing on the stern on one leg and wrapping the other leg around the oar [Photo: AFP]

Tomato-growing used to be seasonal in the Inle Lake area. “Now an increasing number of farmers are growing tomatoes all year round,” said one market gardener, Khin Win.

Around 40 long boats loaded with tomatoes make the run daily across the lake to the market town of Nyaung Shwe, where the produce is loaded onto trucks and taken to Rangoon and Mandalay.

Competition and the need to boost crop yields forces market gardeners to use ever more fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides. one tomato grower with a large plot in the lakeside village of Lin Kin said he’d like to avoid using chemical fertilizers, which cost him more than 500,000 kyat (US $400) a year—“But I’d end up with lower yields.”

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The farmer’s father had once managed with organic fertilizer, but the yields of his land had now been doubled by his son’s use of chemicals.

The source of the chemical fertilizers and pesticides is also a cause of worry to the farming communities that line the banks of the lake. It’s feared that products banned in other countries are being dumped in Burma, according to an academic working with an environmental organization in Rangoon.

The effect of the chemicals on the water of Inle Lake has yet to be fully documented, but there is stark evidence that the health of people living on its banks is suffering. Of the 64 villages in the area of the lake, only five receive piped water from Nyaung Wun reservoir. The other 59 draw their water from the lake, purifying it as best they can—usually simply by boiling. A few, wealthier homeowners have private wells.

A 43-year-old resident of Kay Lar village said his 8-year-old son died two years ago after drinking water from the lake and falling sick. A rural clinic official said dysentery, hepatitis and kidney ailments are common in the region.

Deforestation around the lake has increased the amount of silt in its depths, further adding to the pollution and lowering water levels. A retired engineer who used to work for the Taunggyi municipality said the lake’s sedimentation rate had doubled in recent years. “The government tries, but it can’t control the sedimentation,” he said. “The lake can’t survive if it goes on like this.”

Tourism is another factor in the lake’s demise. Six hotels and resorts sit on the edge of the lake, and there are plans for more construction to cater to the increasing numbers of tourists.

Inle Lake still commands a prominent place on every tourist itinerary, but some tourist operators are wondering how much longer they can safely push its idyllic image.