Cyclone Nargis has devastated Myanmar’s agriculture heartland, known as its rice bowl, experts said Wednesday, and could result in long-term food shortages for the impoverished country.

The Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that five states hit hardest by Saturday’s cyclone produce 65 percent of the country’s rice. The region is also home to 80 percent of its aquaculture, 50 percent of its poultry and 40 percent of its pig production, the FAO said.

Of most concern is the rice production. Since the impoverished country has produced enough to feed itself until now, it has been able avert potentially dangerous shortages as well as recent rice price increases, which have tripled recently on the global market.

“There is likely going to be incredible shortages in the next 18 to 24 months,” said Sean Turnell, an economist specializing in Myanmar at Australia’s Macquarie University. “Things will be tough.”

The FAO said the storm may even have affects on future harvests because it likely destroyed seeds kept in inadequate facilities.

“There is risk that stored rice seeds kept by farmers _ usually under poor storage facilities _ might be affected by the cyclone,” it said in a statement.

Once the world’s top rice producers, Myanmar has in the past four decades seen its rice exports drop from nearly 4 million tons to only about 600,000 tons this year.

Its exports are so small these days that few expect the cyclone will have any impact on world rice prices, which have skyrocketed recently in the face of higher fuel costs and greater demand from India and China.

Mostly due to the mismanagement of the country’s ruling generals, the country’s road networks and rice storage facilities have also fallen into disrepair and such things as fertilizer and credit for farmers is almost nonexistent.

Now, the country must confront the reality that entire rice-growing regions have been wiped out. Many of the roads and bridges needed to transport what crop can be salvaged were likely destroyed by the cyclone.

The cyclone, which battered the country last weekend with winds of 120 mph and 12-foot storm surges, caused tens of thousands of deaths.

The World Food Program, which has started feeding the estimated 1 million homeless people in Myanmar, said one of the most immediate concerns is trying to salvage already harvested rice in the flooded Irrawaddy delta where storage facilities are almost nonexistent. It also warned future production in the delta might be affected because of the “salinity and decrease of nutrients” from the cyclone could reduce yields.

The rice harvest could be lost in the Bago district _ another district hard hit by the storm _ since it had not been harvested yet, the organization added.

The FAO predicted that annual crops of oil palm and rubber plantations also “are expected” to be damaged in areas hit by the cyclone. They are sending in an assessment team in the coming days to have a closer look at those crops and the rice paddies.

In 2004, Myanmar exported 114,000 tons, but last year, that number dropped to 40,000 tons because the government “restricts imports considerably,” said Concepcion Calpe, a rice commodity expert at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

But “in 2008 we were expecting 600,000 tons because they relaxed the restrictions,” Calpe said.

“If they do not export, it (the rice market) will be tighter,” she said, but was unlikely to have a major affect on prices.

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Associated Press writer Frances D’Emilio contributed to this report from Rome.