state of the environment in Somalia - Disasters and Conflicts - UNEP

Box 8. Causes of food insecurity in Somalia
There has been a steady decline in per person food production for years. Food aid constituted 20 per
cent of all food imports from 1970 to 1974 and 5 per cent from 1980 to 1984. The difference between food
produced and total food consumption (the ‘food gap’) changed from a surplus of 5 per cent in the former
period to a deficit exceeding 30 per cent in the latter. This decline in food self-sufficiency occurred
between 1960 and 1990 despite massive international investments in the rural sector and despite
considerable untapped potential in the agricultural areas. Among the reasons for this decline are:
● rapid population growth, which outstripped increases in food production in the 1980s;
● rapid urbanization, which places a growing percentage of the population out of pastoral or agricultural
food production;
● changes in food consumption habits among urbanized Somalis who prefer wheat, rice and pasta
over locally grown maize and sorghum;
● inappropriate government policies such as price controls in the 1970s which created disincentive
for farmers to produce grain crops;
● unintended impact of large-scale annual and often poorly timed delivery of food aid, which depresses
prices and drives farmers out of agriculture; and
● alienation of portions of the country’s most fertile irrigable land for cash cropping of bananas for
export rather than grain.
The food security situation has been worsened by the civil war and statelessness. Without a government,
farmers have lost access to agricultural inputs and services formerly provided by the state. The private
sector has responded to a degree, but the unregulated sector has led to misuse of resources and inputs,
poor quality control and the spread of drug-resistant diseases.
Source: UNDP, 1998
demand for land (IUCN, 1997). Poor management practices on rainfed cropped and fallowed land is leading
to lower levels of soil fertility and soil erosion which, in turn, translates into lower productivity and increased
hardship for people living is such areas.
The major cash crop is bananas whose annual exports exceeded 120,000 tonnes before the war. However,
production and exports collapsed during the war and have not yet recovered. Despite some recovery in the
mid-1990s, commercial farming was hard hit by the El Niño rains of 1997-1998 which destroyed an estimated
80% of the country’s banana plantations, causing about 100,000 families to lose their primary source of
income (EU, Undated).
Other important crops include sugar cane in rain fed and irrigated areas, sorghum in drier zones as well as
corn, mangoes, sesame seeds, beans, rice and cotton. About 400,000 ha are cropped in the main season
and 230,000 ha in the secondary one. The planted area changes significantly from one season to another,
depending on the rainfall pattern. From 1994 to 2000, an average of 300,000 tonnes of cereals were harvested
each year; a significant reduction compared to the pre-war production of 480,000 tonnes, mainly due
to the reduced area under agriculture (EU, Undated).
The prolonged civil war has had some marked impacts on the manner of natural resource use and management
systems, with more negative consequences being recorded in the agriculture sector compared with
livestock production or fisheries. Farming communities in the south have been displaced taking with them their
knowledge of fruit tree management and harvesting systems. New arrivals commonly lack experience of tree
management which has resulted in considerable tracts of vegetation being cleared for charcoal or transformed
into pasture. Deteriorating infrastructure such as irrigation systems, as well as reduced agricultural
Environment in Somalia 30 UNEP Desk Study