Plaget af tørke og mange års fejbåren høst, har mange mennesker måtte ty til alternative madvaner for at overleve, imens fødevareusikkerheden strammer sit greb i det sydlige Madagaskar. Det skriver IRIN News.
ANTANANARIVO, 3 February 2011 (IRIN) – About 720,000 people are facing food insecurity after a third successive year of adverse weather and an increasing “decapitalization” – selling off livestock and possessions as a survival measure – of the rural economy in the south.
“For some time now people have been changing their eating habits, with many eating red cactus that is usually given to cattle, or tamarind mixed with water and earth,” said Harinesy Rajeriharineranio, southern Madagascar coordinator for Actions Socio-Sanitaire et Organisation Secours (ASOS), an NGO focused on health and sanitation, based in the southeastern city of Fort Dauphin.
The World Food Programme (WFP) in Madagascar said drought had caused the widespread failure of maize crops in the southern regions of Atsimo Andrefana, Androy and Anosy to fail. The lean season, when the previous harvest has been consumed and the new crops are not yet ready, runs from October to about March.
“Through reports from local partners since the beginning of the lean season in October, we know people have already started adopting negative coping strategies such as eating their own seeds, and foodstuffs which are damaging to their health, and selling their goods… men [are] migrating from these areas, leaving women and children even more vulnerable,” Krystyna Bednarska, WFP’s country representative, told IRIN.
“Two consecutive years of crop failure might lead to a quick deterioration of the food insecurity situation in an area which is already extremely and historically vulnerable,” she said.
There was a similar scenario in 2009, but the necessary implementation of large-scale emergency and nutritional interventions were not taken in time because of a lack of funding, Bednarska said.
In March 2009, current President Andry Rajoelina and elements of the army took power from former President Marc Ravalomanana, and international development aid rapidly dried up.
SOUTHERN POVERTY
Before Rajoelina assumed power, donor funding accounted for about 70 percent of government spending, but all ministries faced budget cuts of around this size in a revised budget in September 2010.
Traditionally, Madagascar’s poorer and geographically isolated south has been relatively neglected by the political power base, mainly in the north, where the capital, Antananarivo, is located.
Nearly 70 percent of Malagasy live below the poverty line, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), but the number of poor tends to rise the further south you go, where most people depend on subsistence farming.
