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Despite good rains and harvests in most parts of Madagascar, chronic drought in the south means thousands of people are at risk "of extreme food vulnerability, and require food aid", according to the latest joint assessment by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"The state of food supplies, which are fairly adequate at the national level, must not conceal the cereals shortfall and the precarious food situation in most of the southern area," the FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission's report said on 6 August.
The report forecast that "Maize production in Toliara [Province in the southwest] in 2009 might drop by one-half in comparison with last year's, while the output of sweet potato and manioc should fall by 20 percent and 15 percent, respectively." Prices of cereals in the south have already risen by up to 400 percent.
It also noted that the impact of ongoing political turmoil and natural disasters like floods and cyclones on food production in the Indian Ocean Island in the 2008/09 agricultural season had brought the estimated total cereal requirement to some 206,000 tonnes beyond what was available locally.
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