“More than half of the expected harvest was lost in flooding and siltation,” Methode Niyongendako, a consultant with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said.

The rains peaked in mid-September and November, exceeding forecasts in terms of volume and frequency, and were the heaviest since October 1961, according to households questioned, added Niyongendako.

The most affected provinces include Gitega, Mwaro, Ngozi and Ruyigi, which have many rivers running through them.

In Makamba, in the south of Burundi, at least 60 percent of the banana, cassava and maize crop was swept away, according to Salvator Sindayigaya, the agriculture provincial director, with the Kayagoro, Kibago, Makamba and Nyanzalac communes the most affected.

The affected crop accounts for the country’s June to December harvest, agriculture season C, which represents 15 percent of the annual production.

According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the persistence of banana bacterial wilt in the provinces of Cankuzo and Kirundo and the continuation of cassava mosaic disease have further undermined food availability.

“In Cankuzo, food stocks for the poorest households are quickly depleting because the harvest from the 2011 C, mainly beans and maize, was lower than expected due to excess rains,” added FEWS NET.

At present, the Ministry of Agriculture and partners are assessing the production for season 2012 A, which ends in January and represents 35 percent of the total annual production.

But there is little hope for good stocks as heavy rains, which started with the planting season in September 2011, continued throughout the cropping season.

On 11 January, for example, some 45 hectares of crops were destroyed in Buganda, northwestern Cibitoke Province.

“We were expecting a good harvest but hail destroyed all the crops of cassava and maize,” said Ernest Ndayizeye, a local leader. “Our children will die of hunger.”

Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
BURUNDI: Fears of looming food shortage

How People Arrived Here:

is there a food shortage in 2012

The factory to produce ethanol out of cassava has been designed by the Beira-based company Clean Star Mozambique Ltd and, according to the Mayor of Dondo, Manuel Cambezo, the ethanol will be used to produce kerosene for domestic use.

The level of production will depend on the supply of cassava, which will be purchased from farmers in Dondo and the neighboring districts of Muanza and Nhamatanda.

“For us, it is an added value to have this kind of project, because it stimulates the peasants to increase the area cultivated with cassava”, said Cambezo.

Cambezo also announced that in October a new factory, owned by the Balagi Group Africa, will begin production in Dondo of mineral water and spirits.

Tests carried out on the products so far have produced “positive results”, he said.

Source African Press Agency

African News from NetNewsPublisher.com

The July 17 th ceremonial launch of 250,000 wasps into Khon Kaen, a province in northeastern Thailand, is an attack on the region’s recently-identified cassava mealybug problem.

The bugs, a recognized enemy of cassava crops in South America and Africa from three decades ago, have arrived in Asia.

Scientists confirmed the spread of the cassava mealybug to about 200,000 hectares of farmland in eastern and northeastern Thailand in late 2009, then set their targeted attack on the bugs in motion, said Amporn Winotai, an entomologist with Thailand’s Ministry of Agriculture. She projects the mealybugs will be under control in six months.

Thailand, the third largest producer of cassava globally, accounts for 60 percent of the world’s cassava exports. The starchy root is mostly grown and consumed in tropical and subtropical regions and serves as a primary source of carbohydrates in diets around the world. Also widely known as yucca, the crop can thrive in poor conditions and is drought-resistant.

The infestation is devastating the country’s cassava industry, said Rod Lefroy, a researcher with Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), an organization that facilitated the wasp solution. CIAT estimates cassava generates more than $1.5 billion annually in Thailand.

“Most of the five million households growing cassava in the Mekong region are smallholder farmers who rely on the crop for their livelihoods,” Lefroy said. “Quite a few farmers lost 100 percent of their crop last year.”

Read more of the story here at the IRIN news service:
THAILAND: Wasp release to tackle cassava killer

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No, the babe is not on any diet, but has started being extra cautious about eating healthy. She loves her “ghar ka khana”. And from some time now, she’s off rice, potatoes, fried stuff, pastries, cakes, butter and ghee.

Her rejuvenation trip stretches to her eating out too; her favorite restaurants being Mainland China and Indigo in Lokhandwala. At the latter, she gorges on steamed vegetables, ginger garlic soup and chicken steamed dumplings. In fact, the restaurant guys even make her a customized green salad with special herbs on order.

“You are what you eat, so it becomes all the more important to watch your food. After all, the belly rules the mind,” she quips. Ah, now those sound like words of wisdom, in these times of fast-food. No wonder, the gal exudes radiance nowadays.

–Sampurn Wire

Net News Publisher for Entertainment News

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Tagged Sweet potato Action for Security and Health in Africa (SASHA), the project, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will be implemented in eight African countries — Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi and Ghana.

The center said in a statement on Thursday in Abuja that 1 million farming families in sub-Saharan Africa would benefit.

“Melinda and I believe that helping the poorest smallholder farmers grow more sweet potato and get it to the market is the world’s single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty,” Bill Gates was quoted as saying by the statement.

The statement said that sweet potato was the third most important food crop in East Africa in terms of production and the fourth most important in Southern Africa.

“This project will improve the food security, nutrition and livelihoods of at least 150,000 families directly, with an indirect impact on one million families in sub-Saharan Africa in five years and the creation of conditions to reach 10 million households in 10 years,” Dr. Pamela K. Anderson, the Director-General of the International Potato Centre explained in the statement.

The project will establish three regional support centers to be based in leading national research centers in Ghana, Uganda, and Mozambique to strengthen national potato breeding skills and capacity.

It will also promote the commonly grown white-fleshed sweet potato varieties as well as the orange-fleshed varieties of the sweet potato that are rich in pro-vitamin A.

Orange-fleshed sweet potato varieties can significantly lessen Vitamin A deficiency that threatens an estimated 43 million children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa.

Vitamin A deficiency contributes to high rates of blindness, disease and premature death in children and pregnant women.

Source African Press Agency

Net News Publisher