Gambia: Small Country With a Big Crisis 17 May 2012

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Serekunda/Johannesburg — In 2011, the rains failed in the Central River
region of The Gambia, where Mawdou Danso, a farmer, struggled to raise a
crop big enough to tide him over to the next harvest. He invested in an
early-maturing, high-yielding rice called Nerica (New Rice for Africa),
which had recently became available and promised to fit in well with the
erratic rainfall patterns.

He ended up harvesting very little. "I had only two months of feed for my
48-member family from all the lands I put under cultivation, compared to
last year when I had 15 [50kg] bags of Nerica and able to have six months
of food stock," said Mawdou.

"I can only manage to feed my family for the rest of the year by working
for other people for survival... I do not have any money to invest in the
next planting season." The rainfall has been too capricious even for Nerica.

There is mounting concern that The Gambia, Africa's smallest country, could
face yet another shortfall in the 2012/2013 agricultural season in the
production of rice, millet, maize and groundnuts, the main crops, crippling
its efforts to become food secure.

The planting season has begun, yet there is a huge seed deficit. "It is
essential that farmers receive quality drought-tolerant seeds, as well as
fertilizer and other production support by the end of May 2012 to start
their next production campaign," said Sonia Nguyen, a spokesperson for the
UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the Sahel.

The Gambia, surrounded by Senegal, is part of the Sahel zone, and it too
was affected by the late, erratic and unevenly distributed rainfall during
the 2011/12 growing season. Crop production is expected to drop by more
than half compared to 2010, and by 50 percent compared to the five-year
average, said Nguyen.

Patrick Ezeala, spokesperson for Oxfam America in The Gambia, said there
had been huge declines in the main food crops: rice (-79 percent),
groundnut (-67 percent) and early millet (-53 percent). "Coupled with this
production drop, food prices have gone higher than normal, surpassing the
high food prices experienced during the 2008 global food crisis. The drop
in production combined with rising prices suggests that seed insecurity
will increasingly become a challenge for farmers."

A 50kg bag of rice costs at least US$5 more than it did in 2011. Even
though The Gambia has made tremendous progress in poverty eradication since
2003, at least 48 percent of its population live on little more than $1 a
day.

Almost 60 percent of its people have been affected by food shortages - one
million of the 1.7 million population are in need - according to the
Agriculture Ministry.

Almost 60 percent of its people have been affected by food shortages - one
million of the 1.7 million population are in need

Coverage of the food crisis in the Sahel has ramped up in the past few
months, but attention has eluded The Gambia. Ezeala reasoned that perhaps
the crisis in The Gambia was still developing into an emergency, and so had
not yet caught the attention of the international media.

Aid workers say the government issued warnings early enough - the first one
jointly with UN agencies in October 2011. In January 2012, the government
declared the 2011/12 agricultural season a failure and drew up a $23
million plan with a list of actions to prepare farmers for the 2012/13
agricultural season.

In rural areas, 409,000 people (of whom 67,500 are children under 15

years) are seriously affected by the poor harvests. "Overall, vulnerability
to food insecurity will continue to rise in the country," UN agencies are
warning.

Another about 192, 850 people living in the poorest urban areas are still
recovering from floods in previous seasons and are vulnerable to food
insecurity, rising food prices and additional economic pressure from
helping relatives in affected rural areas.

*Shocks and funding issues*

Though farming is the main source of livelihood for some 75 percent of the
population, especially rural women, Gambian farmers have to rely on
rainfall - only six percent of agricultural land is irrigated, mostly for
growing rice in the Central River region. Food production has fallen short
of the country's consumption needs for decades, according to FAO.

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Sahel crisis

The gap has widened further in the past few years because of climatic
shocks and "international donors' reluctance to support a government
accused of using strong-arm tactics in the face of opposition", the agency
said.

As in other parts of the Sahel zone, rains in The Gambia have been thin.
Many climatologists have published data suggesting that the Sahel zone has
not really recovered from a severe drought in the in the 1960s.

*Can rains be thin?*

Climate scientist Chris Funk, of the US Geological Survey, has been
studying rain and temperature data for the Senegal from 1900 to 2009.

"If the Gambia follows the general trend for Senegal (which seems

likely) our analysis would suggest large increases in air temperatures and
more-or-less flat rainfall since 1970, indicative of a failure to recover
from the steep post-1960s rainfall decline," he said.

There has not been much outside help. Donor grants averaged only about two
and a half percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) per year from 2007
to 2010, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported in December 2011.
"Some potential donors have expressed concern over human rights and freedom
of the press," it noted.

The Gambian government has been accused by several international rights
groups, including Amnesty International, of constraining people's right to
freedom of expression and political freedoms.

The Gambia does not have enough money to invest, as income from tourism,
its main revenue earner, dropped because of the global recession in recent
years. The government has been borrowing heavily - Gambia's domestic debt
was just over 29 percent of GDP in 2010, and interest consumes nearly
one-fifth of revenues.

In 2010, the government launched the ambitious five-year National
Agriculture Investment Plan (GNAIP), a $266 million strategy to drive
agriculture-led growth. The plan, scrutinized by the African Union's
Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Plan, hoped to push up the
contribution of its cash crop, groundnuts, to 30 percent of export earnings.

Almost every household in the rural areas grows groundnuts, but farmers are
extremely vulnerable to price variations on international markets and the
weather. Poor rains in 2011 also affected groundnut production.

The IMF noted in March 2012 that while tourism seemed to have picked up in
2011, GDP growth fell because of sharp contractions in the rice, groundnut
and millet harvests.

Various UN agencies have received about $4.8 million from the UN Central
Emergency Response Fund to respond to the crisis in The Gambia.

*[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations
]*


-- 
-Laye
==============================
"With fair speech thou might have thy will,
With it thou might thy self spoil."
--The R.M


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