El Niño: Ethiopia needs $45m to scale over

NaijaAgroNet:

Following the starvation caused by the El Nino in Ethiopia with this year's main planting season winding down, the country needs $45 million in agricultural support, reports NaijaAgroNet.

This was contained in the newly released Mid-Year Review of the Ethiopia Humanitarian Requirements Document (HRD) developed jointly by the Government of Ethiopia and UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and other development partners and made available to NaijaAgroNet, indicated that 900 000 additional households need urgent agricultural support bringing the total number to 2.9 million in August.

The review, NaijaAgroNet gathered also showed there is still a small window of opportunity in September for farmers to plant the last set of crops this year and grow food for millions facing hunger, provided the necessary support arrives on time.

In order to meet additional agricultural sector needs HRD reviewed stated will require $45 million bringing the total requirement for the agriculture sector to $91.3 million for 2016.

“The overall food security situation has improved only slightly, with the number of people requiring emergency food assistance having decreased from 10.2 million to 9.7 since the beginning of the year,” part of the report read.

NaijaAgroNet recalls that the El Niño-induced drought caused a wide-scale failure of crops and loss of livestock critical to the livelihoods of farmers and agropastoralists. Even as the drought is being followed by seasonal floods, which have already led to crop damage and the inundation of pastures and may be further exacerbated by a phenomenon called La Niña, expected from October onwards.
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El Niño may have devastating impact on Southern Africa’s harvests

NaijaAgroNet:

The quadruple of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have raised an alarm that El Niño may have devastating impact on Southern Africa’s harvests, reports NaijaAgroNet.

In a joint press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, they also noted that Southern Africa is currently in the grip of an intense drought that has expanded and strengthened since the earliest stages of the 2015-2016 agricultural season, driven by one of the strongest El Niño events of the last 50 years.

They also noted that across large swathes of Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, and Madagascar, the current rainfall season has so far been the driest in the last 35 years. Agricultural areas in northern Namibia and southern Angola have also experienced high levels of water deficit.

Equally, NaijaAgroNet gathered that much of the southern African sub-region has consequently experienced significant delays in planting and very poor conditions for early crop development and pasture re-growth. In many areas, planting has not been possible due to 30 to 50 day delays in the onset of seasonal rains resulting in widespread crop failure.

Experts noted that although there has been some relief since mid-January in certain areas, the window of opportunity for the successful planting of crops under rain-fed conditions is nearly closed.

Seasonal forecasts from a variety of sources are unanimous in predicting a continuation of below-average rainfall and above-average temperatures across most of the region for the remainder of the growing season.

The combination of a poor 2014-2015 season, an extremely dry early season (October to December) and forecasts for continuing hot and drier-than-average conditions through mid-2016 suggest a scenario of extensive, regional-scale crop failure.

In addition, South Africa has issued a preliminary forecast of maize production for the coming harvest of 7.4 million tonnes, a drop of 25 percent from the already poor production levels of last season and 36 percent below the previous five-year average.

These conditions follow a 2014-2015 agricultural season that was similarly characterized by hot, dry conditions and a 23 percent drop in regional cereal production. This drop has increased the region’s vulnerability due to the depletion of regional cereal stocks and higher-than-average food prices, and has substantially increased food insecurity.

The numbers of the food insecure population are now increasing due to the current drought and high market prices. It is expected that the population in need of emergency food assistance and livelihood recovery support will increase significantly.

+Naija AgroNet 

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El Niño causes harvest decline in Central America

NaijaAgroNet:

 

El Niño, a weather phenomenon characterized by abnormal warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean has caused major decline in cereal production in Central America, NaijaAgroNet reports.

Early estimates from Central America’s main de prima harvest suggest declines of as much as 60 per cent of maize and 80 per cent of beans due to dry weather El Niño-related dry spells are known to delay planting, reduce planting areas and stifle crop development

According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), prolonged dry weather associated with the El Niño phenomenon has severely reduced this year’s cereal outputs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, putting a large numbers of farmers in need of agricultural assistance as the sub-region tries to recover amidst ongoing dryness.  This, NaijaAgroNet learnt, is the second consecutive year that the region's main season cereal harvest has been negatively affected by severe dry weather related to El Niño.

The Central American Agricultural Council -- headed by agriculture ministers of the sub-region – has declared a state of alert after hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers have suffered the partial or total loss of their crops planted for the main grain season that runs from May to September.

With hundreds of thousands of families affected by severe food losses, the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua have begun distributing agricultural aid packages, including seeds, fertilizers and irrigation pumps, to help farmers recover as much as possible in the second planting season, now under way, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The Economist in FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) unit covering Latin America, Felix Baquedano, said, “This year's El Niño's impacts are even more intense than last's. After two years of intensifying dry weather, it’s critical that we support farmers to recuperate some of their losses by helping them achieve stronger yields in the second season,”

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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Pix: Felix Baquedano,