The amount of drought witnessed at the end of 2015 and cross over to 2016 is giving the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) a lot of concern, hence it voted the sum of
$50m for emergency in the drought-ridden Ethiopia, reports NaijaAgroNet.
The
droughts attributed to the strongest El Niño weather episode in the last
several decades, FAO said, has caused repeated crop failure, decimated
livestock herds and driven some 10.2 million people across Ethiopia into food
insecurity.
FAO
revealed this to NaijaAgroNet in its emergency response plan to
urgently protect livestock and rebuild crop production in the Horn of Africa
nation.
According
to the FAO Representative for Ethiopia, Mr. Amadou Allahoury, the outlook for
2016 is very grim, adding that "After two consecutive seasons of failed
crops, the success of the main cropping season that starts now will be critical
to preventing conditions from worsening."
Mr.
Amadou equally said that continued drought throughout the beginning of 2016, also
means pasture will become even more scarce, which will negatively impact
livestock keepers that rely on those grazing lands and water points for their
food security.
"Food
overall will become harder to access if we continue to see prices rise, food
stocks deplete and livestock become weaker, less productive, and perish,"
he said.
The
El Niño phenomenon is associated with the abnormal warming of sea surface
temperature in parts of the Pacific Ocean that has severe effects on global
weather and climate patterns - leading to reduced rainfall and drought in some
regions and heavy rains and flooding in others.
Under
the current El Niño, crop production in Ethiopia has dropped by 50 to 90 per cent
in some regions and failed completely in the east. The drought resulted in the
loss of hundreds of thousands of livestock.
Isaac Oyimah/GEE +Naija AgroNet @FAO News
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