Volatile climate, politics jeopardize Madagascar’s access to food precarious

AllAfrica.com via UN News Service: Access to food for the people of Madagascar remains unreliable because of the impact of natural disasters, which routinely strike the island State, and continuing political tensions, a United Nations report warned today.

The joint Food and Agricultural Organization (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. However, the drought devastated the south, home to some of the country's poorest communities, has caused national maize, sweet potato and cassava production to slump….