From atop the coconut tree where he fled to escape the onrushing water, Muhammad Yacob watched the tsunami turn his rice paddy into a briny, debris-strewn swamp.

　　Nine months later, Yacob and his wife are harvesting their best-ever crop - despite fears that salt water had poisoned the land.

　　"The sea water turned out to be a great fertilizer," said Yacob, 66, during a break from scything the green shoots and laying them in bunches on the stubble. "We are looking at yields twice as high as last year."

　　Rice, the region's staple food, is not the only crop thriving on tsunami-affected land in Indonesia's Aceh province, which suffered the worst damage and loss of life in the December 26 disaster.

　　Farmers say vegetables, peanuts and fruit are also growing well, spurring hopes that agriculture in the still devastated region will recover faster than expected.

　　But bumper harvests for some mask a very precarious future for most farmers in areas where a massive offshore earthquake caused the sea to crash ashore, experts say.

　　According to UN surveys 81 percent of the 47,000 hectares of agricultural land damaged by tsunami waves in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India and Thailand is again cultivatable.

　　But experts say much fertile land remains under water or sand churned up from the ocean floor.

　　Waves and mud have destroyed or clogged countless drainage systems. So many villagers were killed there is a shortage of labor to clear the land and replant.

　　Yacob says he has received no tsunami aid from the government, and sighs as he points to a mangled threshing machine, rusting where it was tossed by the tsunami waves.

　　The largest earthquake in 40 years sent 18-meter waves crashing into coastal communities in Aceh and more than eight kilometers inland. Of the 178,000 who died in the 11 tsunami-hit countries on the Indian Ocean rim, 130,000 victims were in Aceh province.

　　Researchers say high rainfall in most Indian Ocean countries washed out the salt quicker than expected. Higher yields in some plots are explained by rich top soil and the composting effect of other organic matter dumped by the tsunami.

　　(The Associated Press)