Households face difficulty accessing food due to high food prices

The 2022 agricultural season is underway across all agricultural zones of the country. Cleaning activities, transporting manure to the fields, and even planting in the country's extreme south are the average income and food opportunities for poor households. Average off-season rice harvests are underway in the irrigated perimeter areas of Segou, Koulikoro, Mopti, Gao, and Timbuktu, which will improve the food supply of this commodity.

The seasonal decline in cereal supplies is observed overall but more pronounced than in an average year due to the drop in cereal production in 2021, particularly in insecure areas where trade flows remain disrupted. The sharp increase in food prices relative to the five-year average of more than 30 percent, which reduces the terms of trade between goats and cereals relative to the average, is not conducive to average access to food for poor households.

The current pastoral lean season is progressing as usual due to average livestock conditions. However, limited access to some pastures in the insecure areas of the central and northern parts of the country and the western Sahel is causing unusual concentrations of animals and an early deterioration in pasture conditions in the host areas, adversely affecting the feeding of livestock

The ongoing Crisis (IPC Phase 3) food insecurity for poor households in areas in the North, in the Liptako Gourma area, due to poor households' access difficulties to food is leading to atypical strategies such as borrowing and reduced non-food and food expenditures, will continue until September 2022. As for poor households in urban centers, the Western Sahel zone, and the Niger River valley, food insecurity (IPC Phase 2) will continue until September 2022 due to the early lean season linked to the early depletion of stocks and the level of food prices which limit their access to food.