Poor rains and locusts cause big grain shortage

Niger suffered a big shortfall in grain production and heavy damage to its pasture land this year as a result of poorly distributed rainfall and crop damage by locusts, a senior Agriculture Ministry official said. The landlocked West African country would need to import an estimated 223,487 tonnes of cereals in 2005 to make up for the shortfall suffered in this year's harvest, Daddy Dan Bakoye, the head of the Agriculture Ministry’s statistics department told IRIN. After a record harvest in 2003, production of millet, sorghum, maize, rice and wheat amounted to around 2.6 million tonnes, during the 2004 harvest which ended last month, Bakoye said. That was insufficient to cover the needs of Niger’s 11 million inhabitants, which are estimated at 2.9 million tonnes, he added. The country achieved a grain surplus of 440,000 tonnes in last year's record harvest, so there are still some food stocks to draw on, but the government plans to import 223,500 tonnes of rice and wheat in 2005 to make up the expected shortfall, Bakoye said. Patchy rainfall and the locust invasion had an even more negative impact on Niger's desert and semi-desert pastures where nomads graze their cattle, sheep and goats. Bakoye said Niger faced a 36 percent shortage in fodder and this would force its many of its cattle herders to cross into neighbouring countries to seek decent grazing. In the department of Maradi, in southern Niger, 600 km east of the capital Niamey, many farmers were being forced to leave their homes after 400 villages suffered poor harvests and heavy damage to their grazing land, said Boubacar Gaoh Illiassu, the regional director of agricultural development in Maradi. “For the past two months, young people and sometimes whole families have massively deserted the north of the Maradi region and have gone to Maradi, Niamey, Agadez, or even Nigeria and Libya,” Gaoh Illiassu said. The government of Niger has begun subsidizing grain prices in the hardest hit regions in order to help stabilize the population. A total 7,000 tons of millet have been sent to the southwestern Tillabery region which borders Mali and Burkina Faso, to be sold by traders at the subsidised price of 10,000 CFA francs(US$ 20) per 100-kg bag. That is almost half the normal market price of instead of 16,000 to 20,000 CFA (US$32 to 40) per bag. But Bakoye said the government lacked sufficient grain stocks and had turned to international partners for help. France last week pledged 1.5 million euros (US$ 2 million) to assist. Bakoye lamented there had been no other pledges so far. Niger ranks second from bottom on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index of 177 countries. But it is not the sole country in the region to suffer a shortfall in grain production this year. The Inter-State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) said in a December report on the food situation that this year's grain harvest in its nine member states would amount to 11.7 million tonnes. That is 17 percent less than last year's bumper harvest, but still two percent above the average of the past five years. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified Mauritania as the country worst hit. Michel Anglade, the Humanitarian Coordinator for West Africa of Oxfam Great Britain, said that while the overall food supply situation in the Sahel appeared satisfactory, there would be drastic shortages in certain pockets of the region over the coming year, especially for cattle ranchers. “At the local level, the situation could worsen and even become alarming in the near future,” he warned. “There were signs of distress in November in some areas, although that is normally the best month for cattle farmers." He said the situation could become critical in January 2005 in parts of Mali and Niger north of the 14th parallel, where the savannahs of the Sahel melt away into the southern fringes of the Sahara desert.