Madagascar Rainforest

‘Reutlinger Nachrichten’ says that in parts of the South of Madagascar there hasn’t been any rain since early 2019. Former fertile areas now turned into desert and agricultural field turned barren. Furthermore the price of vanilla – like most agricultural goods – isn’t stable and thus varies from year to year. Thus Madagascan vanilla farmers currently face a lot of difficulties. Thus the companies Symrise and Unilever plus the aid-organisation Save the Children – which tries to fight child labor in the vanilla branche and others – now joined a project provided by GIZ. Symrise and Unilever now pay these vanilla-producing farmers a bit more than the usual market price for vanilla. Plus they make sure that experts talk to ‘their’ farmers about efficient and sustainable vanilla-production. Plus the GIZ organizes classes for farmers who grow certain spices. Also classes that will help these farmers with their finances are provided. Still so far the price an average vanilla-farmer gets for his vanilla is extremely low according to this newspaper article and I think they’d be better of raising some other product on their farms instead.

When I took the bus yesterday the bus driver had his radio on. I don’t know which channel this was, but a news reporter reported about the current situation in Madagascar: An increasing number of small and big tornadoes that regularly destroy the harvest of certain regions, a drought in the South and 500.000 underage people who are malnourished.

The German newspaper ‘missio’ provided by the aid organisation of the same name says that in some parts in the South of Madagascar people haven’t seen a raindrop since late 2018 or early 2019. So farmers are very poor as they don’t have any harvest to sell and even those who don’t earn their living by farming face problems like a much shorter food supply in the grocery stores, on the market place, in restaurants etc. Hundreds of people even risk dehydration or starvation. Thus in 2019 a Madagascan Roman-Catholic Diocese has started a program that supports people from these dry regions with fresh water. In some parts they could even give seed supplies to grow food plants that require not too much watering. Also some regions had plenty of water supply underground. So the diocese paid for wells to be built there.

The German newspaper ‘Reutlinger Nachrichten’ says that Madagascar currently faces a drought and as a result also a famine. Some speak of the worst drought since the early 80s. What makes this situation even worse is that there actually still are some (not many) fertile places left on Madagascar, but the poor farmers who only took a lease on these places to grow food may lose this source of food and money too as they are not the owners, but only lessees. And some enterprises from China, Korea and Saudi-Arabia show great interest in these fertile areas and will be able to offer a lot of money to those who actually are the owners. Demonstrations against this or help from international aid-organisations or intervention by let’s say lawyers paid by an aid-organisation of course are quite unlikely due to Corona.

The TV-channel ‘Arte’ says that the most Southern villages of Madagascar currently go through a famine due to too little rain. And gangs of robbers and rustlers from the North of this country attack these villages to steal cattle and food products to sell them somewhere else. Poverty can be found in all of Madagascar you know. During some of these attacks people even got injured or so traumatized they meanwhile spend as much time as possible in some hidden places in the forest instead of the house. This is why the government of Madagascar reduced the number of food deliveries to this famine stricken area and instead ordered some soldiers to guard the few food-deliveries they still send. Some places even closed because of these attacks as shop owners, headmasters, hospital staff etc. were too afraid of these bandits to go to work every day. Sick people even died because of disease, because their healthy relatives were too scared to bring them all the way to the nearest doctor. Farmers limited the time spent on their crop fields – therefore also reducing the harvest – due to feeling too exposed there.
I said before that the government still provides famine-stricken areas with food and that the food deliveries are guarded by military. Alas some gangs then just wait until the person has left the guarded place with the food he received. Then they attack. So instead of saving some food for later – or for family members who for one reason or another had to stay home – many people eat as much as possible right where they received it before going home. Thus the loss of food wouldn’t be too big in case of robbery. Some even started eating larves and insects or the roots of the trees they once planted to have some cool shade – not an unhealthy food, but not usual diet for a Madagascan. What is unhealthy however is the fact that some even eat crops – stolen or from their own fields – before they’re even edible. Others store types of food that can be stored for a very long time and don’t need to be cooked – robbers also stole their kitchen utensils due to the metal – meaning they eat more or less the same every day.