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Mauritania

Mauritania Food Security Update, March 2010

Attachments

- With the exception of harvests in southern agropastoral areas and western rainfed farming areas, harvests in all other parts of the country were smaller than projected in November of last year. In the absence of any new incentive measures, there is no reason to expect a large harvest of hot off?season crops, which makes it unlikely that the October forecast putting hot off?season crop production at approximately 31,000 MT will be borne out.

- However, despite the nationwide production shortfall and a scale?back in Senegalese exports of coarse grain crops, there is still adequate food availability thanks to imports from Asia (rice), Europe (vegetables and other foodstuffs), Mali (coarse grains), and Morocco (fruits and vegetables). Markets across the country are wellstocked.

- In general, conditions in pastoral areas are still average, and trends in terms of trade are in favor of local households, except in transhumant pastoral areas, western agropastoral areas, and the northern reaches of the Senegal River Valley.

- For the time being, food security levels are still in line with normal seasonal patterns, except in the case of poor farm families in the Senegal River Valley and central and eastern rainfed farming areas and farming?oriented agropastoralist households in western and northern agropastoral areas and transhumant pastoral areas. The hunger season for this latter group of households is already underway and will continue until the growth of fresh pasture in July, for pastoralists, and until the next harvest of rainfed crops in September/October, for farmers. There are still high levels of food insecurity in urban slum areas of Nouakchott and Nouadhibou.