MALI : Rain but too few seeds

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MALI: Rain but too few seeds

MOPTI, 17 August 2012 (IRIN) - It is raining in Mopti Region in central Mali and most of the fields are filled with millet and rice seedlings, turning the usually dusty landscape a vivid green. But interspersed with these are vast tracts of land that lie uncultivated because farmers could not get the seed to plant them.

The government estimates rice production this year could be reduced by 20 to 30 percent as a result, said USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, (FEWS NET).

“This will have several dimensions : production will go down, farmers will be left more food-insecure, and they won’t have enough seed to plant next year,” said an international donor active in agriculture in Mali, who estimates that hundreds of hectares of land in Mopti will not bear crops this year because of seed shortages.

The cycle of drought and seed shortages, aggravated by political instability in adjacent northern Mali and a flow of refugees from there, has had devastating effects in Mopti region. Pockets of severe drought in 2011/12 left just 11 percent of households with enough seed to plant in this year’s season, the donor suggested. The closing of banks in Mopti to protect them from looters from the north has further squeezed farmers’ access to credit to buy seeds from elsewhere.