Agriculture

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/

CURRENT CONDITIONS Guinea has a tropical climate with two alternating seasons, a November–March dry season and an April–October rainy season. In general, rainfall increases from north to south. Average annual rainfall is 1,988 mm. Rice is the staple crop, and other important food crops are corn, fonio groundnuts, and cassava. Most of the population is rural, and the agricultural sector is the major employer. Urbanization is a growing phenomenon in Guinea. Agricultural GDP remained at about 20 percent of total GDP between the mid-1980s and 2005. By 2009, that share declined to less than 10 percent, reflecting a stagnation in agricultural productivity and the growth of other sectors like mining and the service sector.  

Please click to read more