Agriculture

CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH AND POLICY by Lisa Schnirring                                Feb. 17, 2015

 The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today announced a new $5 million initiative for rural parts of Guinea that pairs Ebola prevention messages with help for farmers whose livelihoods and food supply have been hurt by the epidemic.   (Scroll down for three additional links.)

... the FAO said the agreement also involves the World Bank and Guinea's government. Unlike in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Ebola activity in Guinea has seen multiple dips and spikes, and community resistance incidents have continued to stall response progress there, especially in rural areas.

In related developments, the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) detailed more social mobilization activities planned for the region in parts of Liberia's Montserrado County and in Marbigi County, where cases were recently detected.

Social sensitization projects through the media have targeted several problem areas in Guinea, and recent activities there and in Liberia and Sierra Leone involve religious leaders in promoting safe burials and dispelling myths about Ebola.

COMMENTARY:  HUFFINGTON POST  by Kanayo F. Nwanze President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)                                                                                                                                 Jan. 26, 2015

....Now we must begin to look at what happens to the affected communities after Ebola. A food crisis seems increasingly likely to follow in the wake of the epidemic, which has devastated small-scale farmers. Without investment in their long-term development, farming households - and West Africa's future food security - will remain at risk.

Even before the outbreak, the World Food Programme estimated that some 1.7 million people in the region faced food insecurity - defined as a lack of reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, nutritious food. As a direct result of Ebola, it is expected that an additional 750,000 to 1.4 million people will become food-insecure by March.

In fact, Ebola has already affected the food supply. Farmers have stayed away from their fields due to illness, fears of infection and quarantines ordered by the authorities - or simply because there is no one left to tend the land....

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION (FAO)                                                            Dec. 17, 2014

The number of people facing food insecurity due to the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone could top one million by March 2015 unless access to food is drastically improved and measures are put in place to safeguard crop and livestock production, two UN agencies warned today.

The disease's impact is potentially devastating in the three countries already coping with chronic food insecurity, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said in three country reports published today.

Border closures, quarantines, hunting bans and other restrictions are seriously hindering people's access to food, threatening their livelihoods, disrupting food markets and processing chains, and exacerbating shortages stemming from crop losses in areas with the highest Ebola infection rates, the FAO-WFP reports stressed.

Read complete report.
http://www.fao.org/emergencies/fao-in-action/stories/stories-detail/en/c/273018/