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Niger warns of looming food crisis
Posted by AlertNet: George Fominyen on October 19th, 2011
AlertNet: Niger is at the cusp of another food crisis as erratic rains and insect attacks on crops have caused crop failure in several parts of the West African nation, authorities have warned.
President Mahamadou Issoufou has called on the international community to come to his country's assistance, saying Niger is set to face a cereal deficit of 400,000 tonnes.
A major international intervention was required last year when half of Niger's 15 million inhabitants experienced food shortages and severe...
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Nigeria farmers fear crop loss after erratic rain
Posted by AlertNet: George Fominyen on July 28th, 2011
AlertNet: Nigeria farmers fear crop loss after erratic rain - reports
This November 2009 photo shows a labourer gathering sugarcane at a commercial farmland in Numan community, Adamawa state, northeast of Nigeria. Farmers in northern Nigeria fear erratic rains have threatened the prospect of a good harvest and say crops are already drying up, but the country's meteorological agency argues it is too early to predict how the rainy season will turn out, the Daily Trust newspaper reported on Tuesday.
This...
Senegal farmers fight desertification with trees
Posted by AlertNet: George Fominyen on June 22nd, 2011
AlertNet: Dame Diop looks at the green leaves of trees growing on the sandy Sahelian soil of his Senegal village, Khatre Sy, and talks with modesty about the community's effort to restore fertility to their degraded soil.
"There was a time when we could stand in the village and see cars on the road, although almost four kilometres separate the road from the village,' said the 45-year-old.
"The trees had disappeared because of many droughts and also because people were cutting them for firewood and for...
Increased fertiliser use can stem loss of W.Africa forest-study
Posted by AlertNet: George Fominyen on April 15th, 2011
AlertNet: West African farmers could have saved 2.1 million hectares of tropical forest from being cleared or degraded if they used more fertiliser to grow crops such as cocoa, cassava and oil palm, according to a study by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture.
About two million households in West Africa depend on cocoa for their income. Between 1997 and 2007, production of the crop doubled in the region's Guinean Rainforest area, which stretches from Liberia to Cameroon.
Forest with high...