Sahel farmers prepare for another disaster

Press, 10 January 1983, Page 20

Sahel farmers prepare for another disaster

By

DERRICK KNIGHT,

in the Upper Volta

The people of the West African countries of Senegal and Gambia woke one morning in November to see a fine grey mist moving westwards. It was topsoil being blown out to sea. The sight chilled the hearts of farmers because it implied that, less than a month after the end of the rainy season, the land was already quite un-. usually dry. Windborne soil is a common sight in March and April when the hot desert wind, the harmattan, scarifies the land south of the Sahara. In November it is quite unknown. Was it the herald of a new killer drought? Last year the communities of the Sahel countries who depend for their basic food on their crops of millet, sorghum, and rice saw their efforts come to nothing. Some farmers planted seeds three times as the early rains failed. Some watched the shoots thrive, only to wilt and fail as later rains held off. Others saw the crop attain near maturity only to be rotted by a late rain and a fierce heat which shrivelled the grain before it could ripen. Plagues of grasshoppers and caterpillars swept the land. “Worse than 1973,” the small farmers insist. “We have nothing to show for long months of work and we cannot feed our families.”

Crops have failed along the length of the River Senegal, whose fertile lands were once regarded as the granary of the region. The river on which traditional agriculture relies for its natural irrigation has not overflowed on to thousands of family fields and is some 16ft below its normal level.

Families with empty granaries and thousands more who depend on being able to purchap their grain on the open market will find none. If they do it may be an unfamiliar import, offered at . soaring prices by wily traders.

In some central and southern parts of Upper Volta the rains have failed or fallen at the wrong time in the wrong quantities. This area of intensive peasant farming can usually be relied upon to make up at least some of the deficit of grain in other parts. As 1982 drew to a close there was an estimated deficit of 150,000 tonnes of grain in the country. The people of the Cape Verde islands are already engaged in a desperate struggle to grow more food by terracing their rocky soil. Here the rains have almost completely failed and the harvest of maize and beans is derisory. Pasture land and irrigated crops have been badly hit. In Chad the situation is equally serious, with an estimated deficit of 262,000 tonnes of cereals and rural hardship aggravated by the effects of recent conflict and insecurity. Emergency centres for mothers and children will have to be organised to save lives. Long-term development projects will have to be postponed. First-hand observations in villages across the length and breadth of the Sahel countries in the last few weeks show that rural communities have already begun to take their own steps to meet the coming disaster. Most of the able-bodied men did not even wait to bring in the feeble" harvest before leaving home to look for work in the towns so that they could at least send some money home.

The towns are grossly overcrowded and unemployment is rife. The newcomers are stretching the already bursting shanty towns still further and straining the fragile public services of the towns to breaking point. . Some villages have already begun to petition local authorities and any approachable aid agencies for food or monev. It

is bad news that food aidshould still be necessary 10 years after the worst years of drought. Even if it does keep many people alive, food aid is no less dangerous for that. People who are discouraged by continued crop failures are tempted to leave their villages or camps and move towards centres where distribution is likely to take place. Already official distress signals have gone up in various parts of the Sahel. In October,’ the Minister for Rural Development in Upper Volta predicted a disastrous harvest in many parts of the country and appealed to the world for help. His opposite number in Mali addressed a meeting of foreign ambassadors and experts in the same terms. In November the Mauritians launched their own international appeal. In that country the total harvest this year barely reaches 20,000 tonnes of grain, against 80.000 tonnes the previous year, which increases the deficit this year to 114,000 tonnes.

Only some 25 per cent of the international aid which has come into the Sahel has gone into rural development and only a quarter of that into food production. At the same time the population of the region has increased at the rate of 2.5 per cent per year and food production by only 1 per cent. Shortages are therefore likely to get worse unless the trend is reversed.

Nor is it only a question of international aid. There can be little hope of progress until the countries at risk try harder to feed’ themselves. To do this, radical programmes of rural reform need to be introduced to which all governments pay lip service but which none has dared to implement. Copyright, London Observer Service.