Weather-related shocks continue to take their toll on crop production in Madagascar’s Grand Sud, worsening poverty and food insecurity – but new research suggests that it is enormously challenging for people to engage or succeed in livelihood activities outside of crop agriculture. Joanna Upton, Senior Research Associate at Cornell University, explains more.
Madagascar has considerable natural resources and extraordinary biodiversity – but remains one of the world’s poorest countries. It is ranked 177 out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index and its population, estimated at 30.3 million in 2023, faces a persistently high poverty rate of 80.7%. Close to two million people are affected by food insecurity, which is at its worst in the Grand Sud, the country’s southernmost area, made up of the Androy, Anosy and Atsimo-Andrefana regions.
People living in the Grand Sud depend on rainfed crop agriculture, historically producing maize, manioc, tubers, sorghum and legumes. However, multiple climatic hazards, including drought, cyclones, erratic rainfall and flash floods (attributable at least in part to global anthropogenic climate change to which the area did not contribute), have caused crop loss, and even complete harvest failures – reducing food availability and leaving people in a state of perpetual uncertainty and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
It is incredibly challenging for households and communities to increase resilience against such shocks. Research underway through Cornell University’s DEEP research project is shedding light on why other livelihood activities are not actively pursued, or are not viable enough to replace or sufficiently supplement crop production. Several factors are potentially involved, including the dominance of crop agriculture, market and accessibility challenges, regional customs relating to livestock, and the prevalence of thirst. The project is also providing key insights on the level of hardship that households and communities face.
We are working with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a primary agency engaging in policy intervention in the south with funding from USAID, to collect monthly data from 1,800 households across the Grand Sud on food security, experience of shocks, and receipt of assistance. Information on livelihood activities, assets, financial behaviours, water, and sanitation is collected quarterly. The data, which build on and inform the Measurement Indicators for Resilience Analysis protocol, are representative across the Androy and part of the Atsimo Andrefana regions and are being used to inform emergency response and future development programming.
Dominance of agriculture
Our research shows that crop agriculture is central not only to people’s food security and wealth, but their identity. Households and communities nearly always consider crop farming to be their primary livelihood activity, even when harvests have failed for years in a row. All other livelihood activities that people have turned to are regarded as secondary, suboptimal, temporary strategies – no matter for how long they have become pragmatically the central way that income is generated, and they are fed. Those who have moved away to find alternative (often low-paying) work in regional cities say their situation is out of desperation, and they would return home in a heartbeat if the harvests improved.
Challenges associated with agriculture, especially drought or dry spells, are always the first problem that households and communities share and seek assistance with, and they overshadow all the other predicaments and challenges of the Grand Sud.
Viability of other livelihood activities
Furthermore, most livelihood activities outside of crop agriculture – which include raising and selling chickens for the somewhat better-off households, though more commonly arduous tasks such as processing sisal plants into raw materials for fibres, selling charcoal or firewood, gathering and selling cactus fruit, and burning cactus leaves to make cattle feed – suffer from fundamental structural failures, such as faulty markets and deforestation concerns.
Such activities can also fail to thrive because nearly all of them require market access, but road conditions in the Grand Sud are incredibly poor due to a lack of investment over the past 30 years. Travelling from Toliara (the capital of the Atsimo-Andrefana region) to Ambovombe (the capital of the Androy region), for example, often takes over two gruelling days in a Land Cruiser (even longer in rainy weather, and/or in public transit vehicles).
All but about 1% of rural households access their regular markets by foot, walking, on average, for about an hour and a half in temperatures ranging from around 27oC to near 32oC. It is difficult to imagine the hardship involved in firstly collecting charcoal and then carrying it for 90 minutes to attempt to sell it for a maximum of 3,000 ariary (roughly 60 pence) – all while often not having sufficient water to drink.
Accessibility challenges also severely limit intra-regional seasonal migration; the cost of travelling to the coastal cities to find work is prohibitive, requiring important productive assets to be sold, probably for little return.
Fishing provides some revenue and sustenance for households located along the southern coastline – but it involves treacherous journeys to distant fishing areas, and the catch is declining (thought to be due to offshore large-scale fishing by foreigners).
Customs related to livestock
Meanwhile, livestock may be owned, but, in the context of some of the customs in the Grand Sud,, this doesn’t improve food security. Livestock is regarded as a status symbol, and is traditionally used to honour the dead. Out of respect for the dead, custom demands expensive feasts for funerals, the construction of tombs (that far surpass any dwellings in terms of cost and structural integrity), and the sacrifice of the family’s entire herd of zebus (cattle) for the feast. Zebu horns are displayed on many tombs; 5-15 is very common, but some have 60 or more.
Cattle are very costly and represent a family’s accumulation of wealth – but this is realised only in death; the belief is that the dead need the wealth to sustain them for an eternity longer than life on earth. There are implications for entire communities too; neighbours offer goats, chickens, and other assets for the feast and to honour the dead.
Even over a short period (May 2022 to December 2023), our data shows a persistent decline in household food security and an increase in coping strategies in the months after a death in the family (although the immediate month is likely buffered by the feast, and assets offered by neighbours are often liquidated by the bereaved to repay debts incurred for the tomb and/or the festivities).
The impact of thirst
It would be close to impossible for most of the world’s population (even the vast majority of Madagascar) to imagine the challenges that people in the Grand Sud face when it comes to finding basic tolerable drinking water. Thirst and/or the preoccupation with future thirst can negatively affect every aspect of life, including productive decision making and developmental progress.
Where village-level boreholes are available, they can have high salination levels at times of the year and/or can become insufficient. In the worst, and more common, cases, digging in mostly dried-up riverbeds is the only option for much of the year (used by almost half of all households at some point, and about 35% at any given time) – and the surface water can be filthy and cause diarrheal illnesses.
Almost all households have to travel to find water; approximately 70% walk more than half an hour, approximately 40% walk an hour, and nearly 20% walk for three hours or more. The Household Water Insecurity Experiences Scale (HWISE) reveals that the situation is worse in the Grand Sud than nearly anywhere that the scale has been used so far.
Finding drinking water also costs substantial amounts of money – money that is scarce and might otherwise be spent on seeds, transport to markets, or even food. At any given time, between 10 and 30% of households pay for water.
As demonstrated by our data in the Grand Sud, weather-related damage or destruction to crops is devastating, but earning a living or sourcing food outside of crop agriculture is beset with challenges. Research is shedding light on the extraordinary circumstances and problems being faced, and can help to inform policies that are designed to improve food security and support people to escape from poverty.
