“Senegal’s food security is at stake”warns Boubacar Sall, one of the great bosses of the onion sector, vital for the agricultural sector. At 68 years old, the vice president of the interprofessional association, which brings together thousands of small producers, had not “I have never experienced damage of this magnitude.” in the Podor region, which alone contributes 46% of the national onion production, the most affected by the floods in the Senegal River valley, in the northeast of the country, since October 12.
According to Sall, who is trying to alert the authorities about the catastrophe suffered by hundreds of thousands of farmers, “the impact is considerable”because the flood coincided with the crops and seedlings. For more than a month, large areas have remained submerged under the waters of the river, fed by intense rains – one of the effects of climate change in this arid region – and have exceeded seasonal rainfall norms by 30%, according to the Center Research and Development Institute.
In the Podor region alone, one of Senegal’s breadbaskets, more than 200,000 people are directly affected, according to the National Society for the Development and Exploitation of Land in the Senegal River Delta (SAED). In the three most sensitive departments along the river, ongoing flooding poses a growing risk to the food security of almost 250,000 Senegalese who make a living from agriculture, according to SAED figures. This in a country far from food self-sufficiency, where agriculture supports 46% of households.
More than 16,000 hectares of agricultural land flooded
From Bakel, 650 kilometers from Dakar, in the extreme east of the country, to Dagana, 700 kilometers downstream, the farmers and agri-food entrepreneurs interviewed speak of a “unprecedented crisis “. In this plain where the gradient is almost zero, the floods have transformed a strip of land subjected to decades of drought into a succession of islets where agricultural lands have been submerged by a river tidal wave.
“Since the 1970s, these territories have suffered the full weight of global warming with droughts, recalls Assane Dione, coordinator of the Research and Implementation Group for Rural Development, a French NGO present in the departments of Bakel and Matam. This led farmers to move closer to the river banks to reduce the cost of irrigation and also take advantage of flooding for declining crops. But we quickly forget that these are vulnerable and flood-prone areas. It will take a climate plan and massive investments to turn the situation around. »
According to official data, whose census remains provisional, more than 16,000 hectares of agricultural land have been flooded in Senegal. Beyond the onion sector, the cultivation of okra – another essential food in the country –, bitter eggplant, banana, corn, millet, tomato, but above all rice – the food base of the Senegalese but mainly imported – have seen very affected by this unprecedented situation. crisis.
“Becoming extreme poverty”
Three weeks after the peak of the floods, in Ballou, located between Mauritania and Mali, 700 kilometers east of Dakar, hundreds of rice producers were still suffering the full weight of the consequences of the rising waters. “The farmers’ 80 hectares of rice fields have been reduced to nothing.”As he fatally observed on October 31, SNCF retiree Mouhamadou Souaré returned to his hometown to cultivate seven hectares of land. In 2023, its rice fields produced one ton of rice. But not a gram could be saved after the water rose up to 1.5 meters high in the village.
“In absolute value, the damage caused by the losses may seem relatively low: 197 million CFA francs [301 800 euros] went up in smokeestimates Mbargou Lo, director of the SAED in Bakel. Behind this figure, thousands of households will fall into extreme poverty, with associated health risks, such as an expected increase in malaria and pneumonia cases, because floods have submerged fertilizer warehouses. Ammonia and urea were released into the environment. »
On the ground, the absence of a visit by the Minister of Agriculture to the disaster areas causes incomprehension among rural services and concern among the agricultural world. The looming crisis should automatically lead to an increase in imports. It also challenges the new Senegalese authorities’ promise of food sovereignty.
