ERITREA: Poor harvest prospects due to inadequate rainfall

Photo: IRIN

Eritrean farmer standing by a field of ruined chick peas

NAIROBI, 1 July 2004 (IRIN) - Poor rainfall has dulled prospects for the 2004 agricultural season in many of Eritrea's regions, leading to increasing shortages of water and food items, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) reported. According to WFP, the Northern and Southern Red Sea regions have received below-average and sporadic rainfall so far this year. The resulting shortages have forced many people to walk long distances in search of drinking water, while sugar, bread and milk have become less easily available in the markets of the port city of Massawa. In Anseba Region, rains, which normally fell in May, were delayed, resulting in severe water shortages and delays in sowing of the main cereal crops, WFP said in its latest food emergency report. Meanwhile, the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net) reported that whereas the short (azmera) rains between March and May had ranged from below normal to normal, erratic distribution had disrupted the planting season and the growth of long-cycle crops. According to a FEWS Net forecast, the June-September seasonal long (kremti) rains would be near to below normal in most of the kremti-rain-dependent areas of Eritrea. It said recent nutritional assessments had found that the prevalence of acute malnutrition to be medium in Maekel (9.3 percent), high in urban Southern Red Sea (3.1 percent) and very high in rural Southern Red Sea (23.5 percent). Recurring droughts over the past four years, including a very severe one in 2002, have affected the food security of nearly half of Eritrea’s four million people, according to WFP. The erratic weather together with extensive land degradation and a border conflict with Ethiopia, which displaced over a million farmers, had resulted in a steep drop in agricultural production. In 2002, cereal production dropped to half the 10-year average, and livestock numbers have also decreased. Eritrea is classified as both a least-developed and a low-income, food-deficit country, in which poverty and under-nutrition are widespread. The country is one of the poorest in the world, ranking 157th out of 174 countries in the UN Development Programme's 2002 Human Development Index. Forty percent of all Eritrean young children and an estimated 41 percent of all women are chronically malnourished.