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afrol News, 14 January - Statistical forecasting experts are predicting a good grain harvest for the 2002-03 growing season in Burkina Faso. Assessments of grain availability by forecasting experts show a large surplus after meeting human consumption needs, and the percentage of food needs met by production is the highest it has been in the past five years. Of 45 Burkinabe provinces, 27 have coverage rates of anywhere from 123 percent to as high as 288 percent, while 8 provinces are more or less at the break-even point, with coverage rates ranging from 92 percent to 113 percent, according to the latest Burkina Faso update by the US agency Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS). Only 10 provinces were showing low coverage rates. Rainfall conditions throughout the 2002-03 crop year had been fairly good. "In general, the rainy season got off to an extremely late start, with relatively little rainfall in certain areas and wide spatial-temporal disparities in the pattern of precipitation from one region of the country to another," FEWS notes. However, rainfall rates throughout the month of August had enabled crops to develop normally. Thus, current estimates by the Burkinabe Agricultural Statistics and Forecasting Unit (DGPSA) attached to the Ministry of Agriculture put grain production at 2,750,300 metric tons, which is a five-year record. This would signify a surplus of 672,900 tons after meeting human consumption needs, DGPSA had calculated. - According to these rather good forecasts, the country's food outlook is quite promising, the FEWS report concludes. "Most provinces around the country should be able to meet a more than acceptable percentage of their food needs." Deficit provinces would profit from a short distance to areas with a food surplus, thus not needing to call for international aid. However, notwithstanding this promising outlook at the national level, there were certain areas of the country in which food security conditions were not looking quite so good, the agency noted, "particularly in the north and the Sahelian zone." Here problems were created by poor grain harvests are further complicated by shortages of water for growing off-season crops, poor pasture production and the resulting reduction in income from livestock-raising activities. The political crisis in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire to a large degree was cutting off remittances from Burkinabe emigrants living in that country, thus lowering the cash flow among the many rural relatives. All in all, however, Burkinabe farmers were to expect a positive food security situation, if the DGPSA forecast is correct. Sources: Based on FEWS and
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