MAURITANIA* (20 February)
A joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission which visited the country in October 2002, estimated 2002 aggregate cereal production at some 100 000 tonnes, about 40 percent less than the average for the previous five years and 18 percent below 2001 poor harvest. The ‘dieri’ crop, which represents more than 80 percent of planted areas or about 60 percent of total cereal production in a normal year, decreased by 80 percent to some 8 000 tonnes. The mission estimated cereal import requirements for the marketing year 2002/03 (November/October) at 322 534 tonnes, of which wheat accounts for almost 200 000 tonnes. Approximately 400 000 people throughout Mauritania require food assistance. Emergency provision of agricultural inputs such as seeds is recommended to enable disaster-affected farming families to restart agricultural production during the next main planting season starting in June 2003.
Famine conditions, which had previously been confined to the Aftout area, have spread to the Senegal River Valley and the central Plateau area of Hodh El Chargui and Hodh El Gharbi, affecting sedentary herders as well as farmers. Evidence of malnutrition abounds in the form of exhaustion and loss of weight, night blindness, scurvy, dehydration and diarrhoea and hunger-related deaths.
A joint FAO/CILSS follow-up mission that visited the country recently observed that cereal prices that had risen considerably on most markets last year remained high, while animal prices decreased steeply.
In March 2002, WFP launched an Emergency Operation (EMOP) valued at US$ 7.5 million (16 230 tonnes of food) to assist 250 000 people most threatened by serious food shortages. In mid-December a regional EMOP, launched by FAO and WFP for the 5 countries in the west of the Sahel most affected by the 2002 drought, included the allocation of 43 632 tonnes of food to Mauritania. However, very few pledges have been received to date for the regional EMOP.