Seeds and feed help farmers, herders after locusts

A Senegalese merchant with her infant strapped to her back exchanges her produce for USAID-funded seed vouchers redeemed by poor farmers at a fair in Touba Toul. Swarms of locusts destroyed crops and left numerous families virtually without an income for up to two years. Photo: R. Nyberg, USAID

When massive swarms of hungry desert locusts descended upon peanut and millet fields in Senegal and Mauritania, farmers and herders knew they were in for a battle. And many lost. Some sent their children running through fields, waiving their arms and sticks and shouting, but within a day or two, it was all over. The harvests for late 2004 and 2005 were gone.

USAID drove back or eliminated many locusts with a fleet of small spraying aircraft. But after the pesticide settled, thousands of people living in rural areas faced an unsettling, uncertain future.

Bringing immediate and tangible support to the farmers and herders, USAID funded 44 seed-feed voucher fairs – 25 in Senegal and 19 in Mauritania.  Swapping vouchers for seed and freed at these events, no one went home empty handed.

Seed-feed voucher fairs increase access to seed and animal feed by organizing markets for households affected by natural or human-made disasters.  These markets bring together the buyers and vendors of seed or animal feed.  Goods are exchanged by using USAID-sponsored vouchers that are given to beneficiaries to exchange with registered vendors for seed and animal feed. 

Overall, implementing partner teams led by Catholic Relief Services and Counterpart International distributed about 378 tons of seeds for agricultural crops and 374 tons of animal feed to 16,152 farmers and 6,257 herders in both countries. 

Not only did the vouchers bring necessary seeds for farmers to replant and resume their livelihoods, the fairs injected $214,000 and $168,000 into the local economies of Senegal and Mauritania respectively.

In Touba Toul, Ndior Ndaw used her $15 voucher to buy 15 kilograms of peanut seeds. “Since the locust infestation, we have harvested nothing,” she said, as people made their way around a huge, dusty field, haggling with local merchants over the amount of seed they could fetch with their vouchers.

Ndior Ndaw has tried to earn a bit of money selling beans and smoked fish, but it has been challenging to bring home enough to feed her husband and four young children. “These seeds are going to help us make a fresh start,” she said. “My husband will be very pleased.”