President Wade looks for better GOANA harvest

Six months after President Abdoulaye Wade launched his agricultural growth initiative, Senegal is predicting record harvests for 2008. Good news for Senegal and its president, both of which were battered by food shortages over the last year.

“The Grand Agricultural Offensive for Food Security” or GOANA, was launched by President Wade in May 2008. It aims for Senegal’s self-sufficiency in food production by 2015. Goals include doubling rice production, and increasing maize and manioc yields.

According to IRIN, Senegal imports 600,000 tons of rice a year, or three-quarters of the country’s food consumption, making its people vulnerable to high global rice prices, especially when energy costs boost transportation costs.

Six months into GOANA, the Ministry of Agriculture predicts a harvest of 1.8 million tons of cereal—a 136 percent increase over last year’s yields—700,000 tons of millet, 500,000 tons of maize and 380,000 tons of non-irrigated rice in 2008.

Thousands of supporters, farmers and members of agricultural organizations gathered opposite the presidential palace in Dakar October 27 to showcase harvests of peanuts, fonio, rice, millet, bananas and vegetables.

But according to the IRIN report, good rains may have had more to do with the higher yields than the government subsidized seeds or farm equipment that some farmers say didn’t reach them until past the planting season.

Still, it is a good start to the President’s worthy effort.

Meanwhile people are going hungry

Saturday, May 17, 2008

This from Reuters:

"ROME (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. food agency hit back on Thursday at criticism from the president of his home country Senegal, who has called the organisation "a bottomless pit of money largely spent on its own functioning."

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation since 1993, said the broadside from President Abdoulaye Wade was politically motivated and factually incorrect."

Diouf is actually a former Senegalese minister himself. President Wade has pushed a Senegalese agricultural self-sufficiency program, something that doesn't look to put food on Senegalese plates right away.

The Reuters story states that Senegal has one of the largest per capita food import figures. It stands to reason that skyrocking fuel prices would hit Senegal harder than most.

Between the lines we read that Wade wants food programs based in Africa where he has more control over them.

If Wade's agricultural self-sufficiency program starts to show success, maybe closer integration with world support is justified. But the UN is addressing an immediate food crisis that is giving President Wade his one of his biggest political liabilities. Not only is picking a fight to divert attention short sighted--it is below the statemanship that Wade has shown up to now.