Bumper cereal harvest expected

Burkina Faso will this year harvest 3,647,000 mt of cereals, an amount that represents an increase of 31 percent on the average production over the past five years. As a result, the country will have in its baskets a surplus of 1,008,600 mt, the Minister of Agriculture Salif Diallo said on Thursday at a press and donor briefing in the capital, Ouagadougou. "Traditionally we often gather to announce crop deficit, but this year we are doing so to announce a surplus," he said. "We have a satisfactory situation and we can say that Burkina Faso is self reliant for cereals this year," Diallo added. The cereal production of Burkina Faso accounts for 27 percent of the total production of the nine-member states of the Inter-States Committee against Drought in the Sahel (CILSS). The maize production in Burkina this year represents 65 percent of the maize produced in the nine countries. Some 31 provinces out of the 45 have seen their cereal production increase by 100 percent or more. The province of Nayala in the west of this land-locked country has seen its production increase by 363 percent. The exceptional production was possible because of the good and timely rains that fell on the Sahelian countries this year, the minister said. Even the northern dry provinces of Seno and Yatenga have seen production go up by 200 and 174 percent, respectively. Diallo noted that the use of selected seeds had also contributed to the good production, along with anti-erosion work which had made possible the tilling of one third of the 9 million hectares of cultivable land. The good results are not confined to Burkina Faso. "We have a good production in the Sahel this year and despite deficit zones within countries of the Sahel, the total surplus will cover the gap," Mussa Mbengua secretary executive of CILSS told IRIN. According to Mbengua, most of the harvesting has already taken place in the CILSS countries, saving the crops from the threat posed by locusts. Burkina Faso's campaign against the locusts included treatment of 5,000 hectares of land. Mbengua's organisation is working out how to obtain markets to sell the surplus production should the upward trend continue. Burkinabe authorities fear that low prices in the market could result in farmers giving up cereal production for more profitable activities.