More than 1 million need urgent food aid in south Madagascar

 

More than 1.1 million people in southern Madagascar urgently need food aid in a rapidly worsening crisis, experts warn.

About 700,000 people are already receiving food aid and increased emergency assistance is needed, according to World Food Programme which is working with the Malagasy government and other humanitarian agencies.

“Harvests fail constantly, so people don’t have anything to harvest and anything to renew their food stocks,” Alice Rahmoun, WFP’s communications officer in Madagascar said.

More than 90 percent of the population in Madagascar’s “Deep South” region lives below the poverty line, making families extremely vulnerable, according to Amnesty International.

“All aid agencies are working together to try to prevent this crisis from turning into famine,” Jean-Benoît Manhes, deputy representative of UNICEF ​​in Madagascar, told The Associated Press.

“But we are witnessing a deterioration which requires increased resources,” he said. “To give you an idea, in the months of July and August, 14,000 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition. That is usually the number we treat in an entire year.”

The four consecutive years of drought have wiped out crops and exhausted the food reserves of the farming communities of Madagascar’s “Grand Sud,” or Great South, he said.

Southern Madagascar is used to dry seasons, usually from May through October, known as kere in the Malagasy language when fields are dry and food is short, but this year is much worse, say local farmers.

The ground is so hard that it’s difficult to plant crops of corn, rice and cassava that are traditionally started in November.

“It’s impossible to cultivate here at the moment,” said Nathier Ramanavotse, 68, mayor of Maroalomainty, in the far south of Madagascar.

“It rained a little last week but it’s not enough to cultivate. We used to grow a lot of corn here but for four years the crops have failed. It has been getting worse and worse,” he said.

“There is no other work to be done here to make money,” Ramanavotse said. “We suffer a lot … many of us have eaten our seeds because it is the only thing left to eat at home. It’s an unbearable temptation when you are hungry.”

Recently the area has been plagued by intense sand winds, called “tiomena” in Malagasy which means red winds. The sandstorms have engulfed and ruined the early crops that were planted, farmers say.

“All the trees have been cut in the area and there is nothing left to hold back the wind,” said Ramanavotse. In the landlocked part of ​​the country, many farmers have turned to tree cutting and coal mining to survive, he said.

Desperate, many families have turned to strategies of last resort to survive, say residents.