The
birth of a child always brings added responsibilities. In Abala
Sani village, it is traditional to prepare a feast to celebrate
a baby’s arrival. To give the baby a good welcome, a sheep
is slaughtered.
But Inoussa Oursouba, a farmer whose wife had just given birth
to their 10th child, a baby boy, faced a dilemma. The family
finances were so depleted that he could not afford to buy a
sheep.
“The harvest last year was very poor. This year we couldn’t
afford both cowpea and millet seeds. I even had to borrow some
money to buy food.
“So I had to ask a friend for extra money to buy the sheep
for the celebration.”
Many households in Niger are in a precarious state because the
2004 harvest was so paltry as a result of a drought and a locust
plague. Cereal prices rose 80 per cent. To buy food and seeds
for this year’s crop, farmers started selling livestock,
among other households goods (such as kitchen utensils, clothes,
jewellery) but the market for animals collapsed, leaving families
with very little for their precious assets.
Inoussa Oursouba says he trekked 275 kilometres south to the
market town of Dogondoutchi, where he sold a cow for the meagre
sum of CFA 70,000 (less than US$ 130). With this he was only
able to buy millet seeds, not his preferred mix of millet and
cowpea seeds that can be planted on the same field.
The future looked grim for his family.
But a Red Cross programme offers some hope. As well as distributing
food to malnourished children and their families affected by
hunger across the Sahel, the International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies is looking into addressing
people’s longer term food security needs in Niger, Mauritania,
Mali and Burkina Faso.
Together with the Niger Red Cross, the International Federation
is assessing the benefits of cash distributions, cereal banks,
livestock programmes and other projects to restore families’
ability to cope.
As a way of breaking the circle of poverty and improving the
harvest this year, the Niger Red Cross, with the support of
the International Federation, distributed a total of 10 tons
of cowpea seeds to about 3,000 families in Tahoua province,
north of the capital. Tahoua is one of the poorest provinces
in Niger. In July, each family in the programme received 30
kilograms of seeds, which allowed them to plant one hectare
of land which will produce approximately 500 kilograms of cowpeas.
The seeds were distributed by ten Red Cross volunteers in villages
that were identified by a government assessment as being in
most desperate need, says Issa Mano, the director of the Ministry
of Agriculture in Tahoua.
“The idea was to help producers with seeds. Fortunately
we met the Red Cross and asked them to assist us helping the
farmers” says Issa Mano.
Niger Red Cross volunteer Bachir Andillo said cowpea was chosen
because the crop grows more quickly than millet or sorghum.
“We especially targeted households headed by women or
elderly people because they are the ones who are the most in
need and can’t afford to buy seeds,” says Bachir
Andillo.
“The need is very high so we had to make choices.
In some villages we could only distribute the seeds to those
worst-off, but in others, everyone got seeds.”
Yet merely handing out seeds isn’t enough to ensure people’s
future.
There are no irrigation systems so farmers depend exclusively
on rain. This growing season, there was an acute shortage of
rain. As a result, by the end of July, farmers had not been
able to plant all their seeds.
Aboubacar Malik, another farmer from Abala Sani says the dry
growing season would delay the harvest.
“For the last month there has been no rain in this area.
Therefore the harvest that we normally get at the end of September
will arrive at the end of October,” he says.
Current cereal market prices are very high but just after the
harvest, prices will drop drastically. So farmers have to find
a way of keeping the cereal until prices have increased. Many
of them will be forced by hunger to sell at a low price.
Inoussa Oursouba says his family received their Red Cross seeds
just in time. Now they will have to wait and see if the harvest
is plentiful.
When asked what they would do if yet another harvest is bad,
he shrugs. The Oursouba family hasn’t got anything else
to sell so they would have to immigrate, perhaps to the Ivory
Coast. As a coping mechanism it is very common for farmers to
end up traveling to other countries looking for work. But they
really don’t want to leave their home, says Inoussa.
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Aboubakar
Malik, farmer from Abala Sani, has four of his children
in Ivory Coast. If he can’t send them some money
he himself will have to go there to work. (p13427)
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Inoussa
Oursouba had all the 10 acres of farmland that he inherited
from his father devastated by the locust invasion last
year. (p13426)
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