Sahel faces pockets of severe food shortage in 2005

West Africa as a whole escaped lightly from this year's locust invasion, but governments and aid workers warn that large numbers of people will face drastic food shortages in isolated pockets of the Sahel over coming year as a result of heavy localised insect damage and poor rainfall. The worst hit country is Mauritania. Government officials in Nouakchott say one third of the 2.8 million population may go hungry in 2005 following the devastation of the country's feeble croplands and sparse desert pastures by voracious swarms of locusts. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has singled out Mauritania and Chad, which is struggling to cope with an influx of refugees, as the only countries in the region which are likely to face a national food emergency next year. Daniele Donati, the FAO's emergency coordinator for the Sahel, said that leaving aside Mauritania, only five percent of the population of the Sahel, a broad swathe of dry savannah grassland on the southern fringes of the Sahara was likely to suffer food shortages in 2005. But Donati stressed that the suffering of these people in isolated rural areas which had been devastated by locusts and drought should not be under-estimated. “In the affected zones, families have lost 70 or 80 percent of their harvest and that would make one think of a localised humanitarian crisis," he told IRIN. The price of grain had doubled in some of these rural pockets, Donati said. Meanwhile, the price of cattle had halved as herdsmen who were fast running out of fodder for their beasts sold them to buy grain, he added. The crisis areas are spattered across the map from northern Senegal, through Central Mali and northern Burkina Faso to Niger and Chad. Most are dry areas on the edge of the Sahara that seldom produce much of a surplus even in a good year. Nobody is willing yet to say how many people are likely to face a food crisis in the Sahel next year, although field studies carried out by Oxfam indicate that a total of 1.5 million people live in areas that were devastated by the region's worst invasion of locusts for 15 years. Pockets of hardship "The big grain producing regions have been relatively spared, but this should not hide the fact that many farming and ranching communities which were already marginalised have been hard hit," said Michel Anglade, Oxfam's humanitarian coordinator for West Africa. "This follows the trend of people continuing to get poorer and poorer, which can be traced back to the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s," he added. The FAO said earlier this week that overall grain production in the nine Sahel countries was normal this year at 11.6 million tonnes. It was down sharply on the record 14.3 million tonnes produced in 2003, but still close to the five-year average. Gambia and Guinea-Bissau enjoyed bumper harvests, but everywhere else, production fell, often sharply. Daddy Dan Bakoye, the head of statistics at Niger's Agriculture Ministry warned that a major shortfall in grain production would oblige his country to import 223,500 tonnes of grain in 2005, the biggest quantity for over 20 years. This year's grain output in Niger plunged by 19 percent, according to the Inter-State Committee to Fight Drought in the Sahel (CILSS). "That was due to a combination of two phenomena," Bakoye told IRIN. "The rains stopped at the end of August and then the locusts arrived. They left their traditional non-agricultural area to invade croplands such as those around Tilaberry (in the Niger river valley)." Farmers in Niger are already abandoning their land Government officials in the Maradi district of south central Niger said earlier this week that thousands of farmers were already leaving their homes in about 400 villages following heavy damage to their crops and grazing land. The FAO estimated that 3.6 million people in Niger could suffer food shortages in 2005 - a million more than in 2004. In Chad, which is struggling to support an influx of 200,000 refugees from Sudan's troubled Darfur province, the FAO estimates that poor rains have slashed this year's cereal output by a third from 2004 levels. And aid workers also point to pockets of hardship in northern Senegal, central Mali and northern Burkina Faso.

-Few countries have enjoyed bumper harvests this year-

But Mauritania, which straddles Arab world and black Africa, was the country hardest hit. Mohameden Ould Zein, the government's director of food security, told IRIN that around 900,000 Mauritanians, could suffer food shortages in 2005. Locusts and drought together devastated food crops in the far south and much of the sparse desert grazing on which Mauritania's 17 million head of livestock depend. "In Mauritania, the most affected country, 2004 aggregate cereal production is expected to drop by 44 percent compared to last year, and pasture has been severely affected," said the FAO report. It was based on assessment missions conducted jointly with the World Food Programme (WFP) and CILSS. Millet, young sorghum, vegetables and rice crops have all been damaged and pasture land has been battered. Herds of livestock have begun heading south earlier than usual in this country where consecutive years of drought and poor harvests have exhausted the population's coping mechanisms. Ould Zein pointed out that cattle ranching accounted for 17 percent of Mauritania's gross domestic product (GDP) and that milk represented the last food resource available to much of the population at times of grain shortage. The damage wreaked on grazing land would therefore aggravate an already difficult situation, he stressed. At the end of November, Mauritania launched an appeal to the international community for 84,000 tonnes of grain and 27,000 tonnes of complementary foodstuffs such as vegetables. Ould Zein said the WFP had pledged to help around 400,000 people, but he urged other donors to come forward. The FAO report spelled out the dire consequences if food aid and seeds to plant in next year's rainy season were not forthcoming. “By early 2005 if appropriate actions are not taken to assist affected communities, the country could sink back into a food crisis similar to the one it faced in 2002/03,” it said. Refugee pressure Chad, like neighbouring Niger, suffered from a premature end to this year's rainy season, said Ngarassenta Ngaerndjan, a food security official in the Chadian government. “There will be pockets of food problems in the northern zones... and also in the east in the area that has welcomed the refugees. People there are used to going to Sudan to stock up, but trade has been paralysed this year," he told IRIN. The FAO estimated Chad’s 2004 cereal harvest at one million tonnes, about one third lower than last year. But production of the most important crops, sorghum and millet, had declined by up to 40 percent because of poor rains, it said. Burkina Faso has enjoyed a reasonable harvest overall, but some northern regions bordering on Mali have seen their millet crops completely wiped by locusts, which also destroyed up to 80 percent of pasture in these districts. It is a similar story in Senegal where the FAO said this year's grain production of 1.1 million tonnes was 22 percent down on 2003, but still close to the five-year average. Locust damage and low rainfall in the north of the country were partly responsible for this. But Abdoulaye Diao, a senior official at the Agriculture Ministry said the fall in grain output was also a result of farmers switching into peanuts and cotton, whose production increased sharply.