Projection Pegs Sahel States' Grain Production Down In 2009-10 By 8-34% - AFP

The cereal crop will decline sharply in Chad, Niger and Mauritania in 2009-2010 because of drought, the permanent Inter-state Committee to Fight Drought in the Sahel (CILSS) announced Tuesday. "Compared with last year, drops in cereal production are expected in Chad (34 percent), Niger (36 percent), Mauritania (24 percent), Burkina Faso (10 percent) and Cape Verde (eight percent)," the CILSS said in a statement received in Dakar.

The regional organisation, based in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, also anticipated a better crop than last year in "Benin (up by 45 percent), Ghana (44 percent), Gambia (18 percent), and Togo (13 percent)."

From a regional point of view, "provisional cereal production in 2009/2010 in the countries of the Sahel and west Africa, with the exception of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali, is estimated at 48.2 million tonnes, a drop of four percent compared with 2008/2009," the organisation said. "With the arrival of the first harvests on the market, the food situation of households is improving across the whole region, but remains precarious in the zones at risk and affected by drops in production."

Moreover, the problem of the supply of grazing land was "critical in Niger, in northeast Mali, in the Sahel part of Burkina Faso, in Chad and in the centre north of Mauritania."

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http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Cereal_production_to_fall_in_Sahel_regional_committee_999.html