Good prospects for off-season agriculture

Chad can expect a healthy crop of market garden produce due to two successive years of abundant rains, the US Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) says in its Bulletin of 29 December, 1999. The national Office of Agricultural Statistics estimates that Chad will produce 136,000 mt of sorghum, up from 133,000 mt in the 1998/99 season, FEWS reports. Good harvests are also expected for okra, in January, onions and garlic, in February-March, and fish. However, FEWS says, the rains have also encouraged the proliferation of flies, which are harmful to livestock, along the Chari and Logone rivers and the southern shores of Lake Chad. As a result, FEWS says, the country’s Office of Livestock Husbandry and Animal Resources has reported heavy losses of sheep and goats in these areas - up to 90 percent in some villages around Djermaya, some 40 km north of Ndjamena. “Livestock owners in fly-infested areas are losing income normally generated by the sale of milk and other animal products,” FEWS said, adding however: “The situation has started to improve as conditions become drier.”