An estimated three million livestock is reported to have died in Somalia as the drought in that country has led to severe shortages of pastures and water since mid-2021.
The most affected are the southern agro-pastoral areas and central and northern pastoral areas, which resulted in widespread animal emaciation, low birth rates adversely affecting local milk production.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS) Special Alert said despite the deaths of domestic animals in Somalia, local farmers had also been affected by the decline in livestock prices.
“Livestock prices declined over the past several months as the prolonged drought had a negative impact on livestock body conditions,” FAO said in its alert.
“In Burao market, one of the main livestock markets in the Horn of Africa, prices of goats in August were 10 to 15 percent lower than one year earlier.
“With the rising prices of cereals, the livestock-to-cereal terms of trade for pastoralists have deteriorated during the last 12 months, with the equivalent in sorghum of one goat in Burao declining from 81 kg in August 2021 to 58 kg in August 2022.”
However, despite the decline of livestock prices in Somalia, prices of locally produced maize and sorghum remained up to twice their year-earlier levels in most markets due to insufficient supplies.
In Mogadishu, the capital, prices of imported wheat in August were about 50 percent higher than 12 months earlier, due to high international prices.
“As meteorological forecasts point to below-average October–December 2022 rains, overall food security conditions are expected to deteriorate,” FAO noted.
“Humanitarian assistance, covering food, nutrition, healthcare and water, needs to be urgently scaled up in order to avert a famine in the Bay Region and the collapse of rural livelihoods, leading to large population displacements across the country,” it added.”
Assessed as the most extensive and persistent in 40 years, the drought in Somalia has caused widespread crop and livestock losses and the displacement of more than one million people from rural areas since January 2021.
According to FAO, the impact of the drought on households’ food security has also been compounded by the prolonged conflict and by hikes in international prices of wheat and fuel caused by the war in Ukraine
