Hunger knows no borders

19 March 2010, Irin
URL: http://www.irinnews.org

Johannesburg:  West Africa can meet its food needs through regional trade, most agricultural experts say, if countries keep their borders open for the free flow of staple grains, especially in times of heightened stress, whether climatic, economic, or brought on by conflict.

In the fourth and final part of the series "Are we heading for another food crisis?", we take a brief look at West Africa, where prices have begun to rise and failed rains have left 10 million people across the Sahel food insecure, after barely recovering from the 2007/08 food price crisis.

After three years of good harvests, in 2009 Niger was again in the food security headlines after poor rains let it down. It was last in the news in 2004, when a combination of poor rains and one of the worst locust infestations in 15 years left more than two million people in need of food aid.

What aggravated the crisis - which spilled into 2005 - was the closure of borders, a decision that hampered the free flow of food, said a paper commissioned by the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS-NET).

"In 2005 the situation was made worse when neighbouring countries closed their borders with Niger. This limited the availability of food and increased inflation," said the UK-based aid agency, Oxfam, which called on countries in the region to keep their borders open.

Niger and neighbouring Nigeria - the "giant" in the region, "accounting for 57 percent of total grain production in West Africa" - both had bad harvests In 2004/05, the FEWS-NET paper said. Nigeria banned the export of cereals as well as "imports that Nigeriens depended on for cash incomes". Burkina Faso, another neighbour, banned exports in 2004, "blocking another potential source of grain for Niger".

Although prices fell slightly after the 2009 harvest, in most West African countries they remained higher than two years before, and have again started climbing in several countries in 2010, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"Sahelian cereal markets are highly integrated among themselves and with coastal countries in West Africa; hence, prices in any individual Sahelian country are influenced by production results, changes in demand, and changes in price throughout West Africa; this particularly true for coarse grains [cereals other than wheat and rice], as they are rarely imported into the region," the FEWS-NET paper said.

Ousmane Badiane, director for Africa at the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute, said high prices were here to stay, as the costs of agricultural inputs had increased enormously.

He pointed out that if the global prices of wheat and rice were to rise, this could aggravate the situation in many cereal-importing countries in West Africa. Failed rains in some of the world's largest rice producers in Asia are causing global concern about the price of rice.

The FEWS-NET paper noted that rice and wheat were important to many people in the urban areas of West Africa, and rarely substituted them for cheaper locally available staples.

Humanitarian agencies have appealed for US$370 million to fund various initiatives in West Africa, of which only 3.1 percent has been covered.