Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/08/22/342480343/a-food-crisis-follows-africas-ebola-crisis
A Food Crisis Follows Africa's Ebola Crisis
By Dan Charles
August 22, 2014 5:09 PM ET
In the shadows of West Africa's Ebola outbreak, food shortages are starting to develop.
This time of year is traditionally the lean season in West Africa, when last year's harvest of rice or groundnuts is mostly exhausted. Until recently, people were quite hopeful about the approaching harvest this year.
"The rainfall situation was very good," says Shukri Ahmed, a senior economist with the UN's in Rome. "We were actually developing an optimistic forecast for crop production this year."
But then came Ebola.
The first food source that disappeared from markets was "bush meat"; meat from forest animals. Some of those animals, like , can actually carry Ebola, so governments have banned it.
Other foods have become scarce as a side effect of efforts to keep the virus from spreading...
A Food Crisis Follows Africa's Ebola Crisis
By Dan Charles
August 22, 2014 5:09 PM ET
In the shadows of West Africa's Ebola outbreak, food shortages are starting to develop.
This time of year is traditionally the lean season in West Africa, when last year's harvest of rice or groundnuts is mostly exhausted. Until recently, people were quite hopeful about the approaching harvest this year.
"The rainfall situation was very good," says Shukri Ahmed, a senior economist with the UN's in Rome. "We were actually developing an optimistic forecast for crop production this year."
But then came Ebola.
The first food source that disappeared from markets was "bush meat"; meat from forest animals. Some of those animals, like , can actually carry Ebola, so governments have banned it.
Other foods have become scarce as a side effect of efforts to keep the virus from spreading...