In less than five weeks to the main
cropping season in Ethiopia, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has
called for urgent funding to the tune of $10 million, to help farmers sow their
fields and prevent drought-hit areas of the country from falling deeper into
hunger and food insecurity, reports NaijaAgroNet.
According to FAO, if seeds are not delivered in time, help
will be too late to secure a decent harvest from the imminent meher season,
which produces 85 per cent of the nation's food supply.
FAO also said that while the food security situation is
worsening, the overall funding response to the crisis has so far been
disappointing, with just 15 percent of FAO's 2016 appeal for Ethiopia covered.
"The meher season will be critical to improving
families' food security and self-sufficiency in 2016. Seed distributions
allowing farmers to plant crops and produce food must be a humanitarian
priority," said the agency's country representative Amadou Allahoury
Diallo, stressing that decreasing dependence on external humanitarian
assistance will diminish the costs of food aid.
Therefore, FAO said, some $10 million is needed within the
next two weeks to distribute seeds to Ethiopian families at risk of hunger and
losing their livelihoods.
NaijaAgroNet recalls that about 10.2 million people in
Ethiopia are food insecure following successive crop failures and widespread
livestock deaths caused by the El Niño-induced drought since early 2015. With
this year's delayed and erratic spring rains, the situation may become worse in
the most affected areas, particularly in the north.
Even as Ethiopia's government has already dedicated
considerable resources to the El Niño response and is working closely with FAO
to help ramp up joint efforts.
Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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