Agriculture

As it was projected earlier in the year, while most markets were braced for a major global economic downturn, the food sector, including markets for bananas and tropical fruits, continued to display more resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic than other sectors.
This report provides supply and demand forecasts for basic foodstuffs, fish and fishery products along with price analysis, policy information and a preliminary assessment of the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on trade in bananas and tropical fruits. The report’s special feature reviews recent trends in food imports bills and export earnings.
Food Outlook is published by the Markets and Trade Division of FAO as part of the Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS). It is a biannual publication (November and June) focusing on developments in global food markets. Food Outlook maintains a close synergy with another major GIEWS publication, Crop Prospects and Food Situation, especially with regard to the coverage of cereals. Food Outlook is available in English. The summary section is also available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.

Over the past two decades, the rangelands of Eastern Africa have experienced sweeping changes associated with growing human populations, shifting land use, expanding livestock marketing and trade, and greater investment by domestic and global capital. These trends have coincided with several large shocks that were turning points for how rangeland inhabitants make a living. As livelihoods in the region’s rangelands transform in seemingly paradoxical directions, away from customary pastoralist production systems, greater insight is required of how these transformations might affect poverty and vulnerability. This article reviews the state of what is known regarding directions of livelihood change in the rangelands of Eastern Africa, drawing on case studies of structural change in five settings in the region. It considers the implications of long-term change, as well as the emergence of very different livelihood mixes in pastoral rangelands, for efforts to reduce poverty and vulnerability in these places.

The effects of climate change are expected to be greatest in the Horn of Africa countries, particularly those, such as South Sudan, whose populations are reliant on rain-fed agricultural production to meet their food and income needs. As one of the least developed countries in the world, South Sudan’s population is dependent on climate sensitive natural resources for their livelihoods, making the country particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. South Sudan’s future economy will be significantly influenced by climate change and the potential for socio-economic losses and damages due to climate change is one of the largest unknowns in the country’s future.

This CSRF briefing paper explores current climate context and trends in South Sudan, peers into the future of climate change and reflects on consequences of it on the economic and climate sensitive sectors in South Sudan. Lastly, the briefing paper suggests responses for policy and practice such as providing climate sensitive aid and supporting the Government of South Sudan to develop AND implement a national strategy for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) developed these guidelines with the overall objective to protect and improve the productivity of the ruminant livestock species of South Sudan. Focussing on the best use of local feed resources, the guidelines mainly target livestock extension workers promoting livestock feed development good practices to pastoral and agropastoral communities as well as the emerging market-oriented smallholder livestock producers. This document also serves as an important tool for advancing the policy and strategic priority actions of the East Africa Animal Feed Action Plan (FAO and IGAD, 2019) and the draft National Livestock Development Policy of South Sudan.

An FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM) visited South Sudan from 15 to 20 December 2019 to estimate the cereal production during 2019 and assess the overall food security situation in the country. The CFSAM reviewed the findings of several Crop Assessment Missions conducted from June to December 2019 at planting and harvest time in different agro-ecological zones of the country.

This report explores the important role chiefs’ courts play in food security and in addressing hunger in South Sudan by reallocating food to vulnerable community members. Their role is particularly important in view of famine and recurrent extreme food insecurity affecting South Sudan. The authors suggest that chief courts potentially offer useful data for famine early warning and responses but also underline that humanitarian actors engaging with chiefs’ courts should do so with a contextually informed and locally nuanced approach.

The project examines how experiences of conflict, regional displacement and mobility, and the shift to an increasingly market-oriented and import-dependent economy have changed what people in South Sudan grow and eat. The research focuses on the country’s borderland spaces, or locations where South Sudan’s interaction with the regionalized market in grains and other foods is most evident, like food markets in Juba. Furthermore, the research looks at experiences with border-crossing and regional displacement and how these can be studied through changing food systems.

War, Migration and Work outlines how the changing economy has affected social relations in the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal borderlands, particularly between the old and the young, and men and women. The result is a fraying social system, where intra-family disputes, including violence, are on the rise, and the old order is being increasingly challenged and eroded. This report is also a discrete case study on how transnational mobility across borders, encouraged by the growth of paid work and cash-based market economies, is part of changing generational and gendered relationships.

Before independence in South Sudan, the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal borderlands had long been an economic frontier between northern and southern Sudan. The Second Sudanese Civil War—partly a continuation of the exploitation of this frontier—reshaped social relations and livelihoods rendering them more dependent on cash-based markets.
After the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and subsequent independence of South Sudan, those people the war had displaced northwards to Darfur and further afield to Khartoum, moved back to rebuild their lives. Post-war Northern Bahr el-Ghazal was not the same as before, however, with livelihoods more precarious and market dependent.
In spite of the changes war and displacement had wrought, male elders still expected to control the labour of young men to rebuild cattle herds lost in conflict. Continued military recruitment for the new wars in South Sudan took men away from home, leaving women without support, who were then forced to find ways to generate income for their families.
This precarious post-war cash-based market economy and the rise of paid work created alternatives to traditional male and female roles. The social perception of work—previously seen as a form of servitude—also changed, with paid work becoming more prestigious. As a result, young men were less willing to work for their male elders and
women realized the necessity of income generation made them less dependent on their husbands.
Though paid work offered partial escape from previous generational and gendered obligations, the new international frontier with Sudan became the last barrier of the old order for young men and women to overcome. Male officials controlling the border felt it their duty to prevent the South Sudanese labour force—seen as a collective national asset—leaving for better paid work in Sudan.
Market dependence in Northern Bahr el-Ghazal and the mobility of labour, including across the international boundary, has a distinct generational and gendered dimension. This is clearly articulated in the local discourse of the young and old, and men and women. It also demonstrates how the impact of war and displacement, in particular the transformation of livelihoods, has sharpened the developing recognition of economic and social rights.

The ability to predict and analyze famine has improved sharply in the past fifteen years. However, the political influences on data collection and analysis in famine and extreme food security emergencies continue to limit evidence-based prevention and response. In many emergencies, good quality data are not readily available, which makes it easy to undermine analysis processes and distort findings. In some cases, these processes are even shut down for political reasons. Sometimes governments or armed groups are the party influencing results for political ends. But it can also be agencies, donors, and even local leaders.

This study documents those political influences, synthesizing findings from six different country case studies (five of which have been considered at risk of famine in recent years) including in South Sudan, noting separate influences on data collection and on analysis processes and the way these play out. Famine analysis will never be free of political influences, but this study recommends good practice for better managing political influences.

FAO assesses that globally 45 countries, including 34 in Africa, are in need of external assistance for food. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly through the loss of income and jobs related to containment measures, have severely aggravated global food security conditions, as well as increasing the number of people in need of assistance. Conflicts and weather shocks remained critical factors affecting the current high levels of severe food insecurity.