US $2.6 million needed to restore livelihoods, FAO says

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has appealed for US $2.6 million to distribute farming, livestock and fishing inputs to vulnerable populations in the Central African Republic before the start of the next planting season, the agency announced on Monday. It said more money was urgently needed for the Organization to help improve the livelihoods of some 210,000 farmers, fishers and livestock owners, who had been affected by continuing civil unrest in recent years. Since 2001, in collaboration with other UN agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), and more recently with Italian funding, FAO has implemented two projects aimed at assisting communities whose agricultural activities have been disrupted by the civil unrest in the country. In June 2003, as part of its Technical Cooperation Programmes, FAO said it approved two more projects to assist the country’s agriculture and livestock sector. An FAO assessment in May and June estimated that 30 percent of the 2003 cassava crop had been lost due to civil strife. "Civil unrest keeps people from working in their fields," FAO said. With farmers’ normal food reserves depleted, FAO said that an estimated 60 percent of this year’s corn, rice and sorghum crop may also have been lost through the consumption of seeds by the population since the Agronomic Research Institute and its seed centres were looted. "In addition, there has also been an increase in the number of children suffering from diseases and malnutrition," the Rome-based food agency said. Several parts of the country were occupied by various armed factions leading to the ostensible division of the Central African Republic into three regions. "This virtual partition has serious humanitarian implications for 2,200,000 people who have been either directly, or indirectly affected by the conflict," the agency reported. The three new FAO project proposals for the Central African Republic are designed to help people resume their normal productive activities in order to meet their basic food needs and to increase the long-term self-reliance of households and communities in the country.