Madagascar’s food security remains vulnerable

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Access to food for the people of Madagascar remains unreliable because of the impact of natural disasters, which routinely strike the island, and continuing political tensions, a United Nations report has warned.

The joint Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) mission tasked with assessing crop and food security in Madagascar underscored the effect a run of cyclones on the east coast in 2008-2009 and several years of drought in the south has had on the country’s crops.

In addition, the political crisis – involving the resignation of President Marc Ravalomanana in early March, amid a dispute with the mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, who now leads the country – combined with the global economic recession has had repercussions for public finances, exports, tourism, unemployment and the national currency, and a knock-on effect on the agricultural sector, according to the FAO-WFP report.

The report noted that food production varies widely across the Indian Ocean nation with good rainfall benefiting the 2008-2009 harvest in the centre, north and west of the country, as well as favouring rice-growing areas with an estimated 8 per cent increase in paddy production to over 4 million tons of rice.


http://www.afrol.com/articles/33940