Government creates committee to tackle bad harvest

The government of Cape Verde on Thursday created an inter-ministerial committee to help minimise the anticipated impact of a bad food harvest this year, among other matters, according to news reports. The committee would coordinate mitigation strategies, paying "special attention to food safety, public health and nutrition, public employment and the saving of cattle," according to a cabinet official quoted by the Portuguese news agency, Lusa (Agencia de Noticias de Portugal) on Friday. The Ministry of Labour said it was "too early to make a definite assessment of a bad agricultural year, but all indications pointed to this reality," the report stated. "Data currently available points to a very low harvest this year in Cape Verde, mainly caused by the non-appearance of the archipelago's rainy season and a much lower than average annual rainfall," Lusa quoted the ministry as saying. The government said it had contacted international partners to "request the necessary support to deal with the very probable consequences of a bad agricultural year". In June, the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) launched a US $1.3 million emergency food operation to feed 30,000 Cape Verdeans, mainly on the islands of Santiago and Santo Antao. Those are the largest and most populous islands in Cape Verde, a very arid Sahelian archipelago, 600 km west of Senegal. Cape Verde, a "structurally food insecure country", is prone to food shortages since it can only produce about 10 percent of its food requirements each year. It gets the rest of its food through bilateral food aid donations and imports, the UN food agency stated.