Funding is needed to start a large-scale control campaign in time for the next crop planting season in September, the agency stated in a news release, adding that its emergency appeals for Madagascar remain “severely underfunded.”

With the plague “largely uncontrolled”, FAO expects that two-thirds of the country will be infested by locusts by September. At stake are the food security and livelihoods of some 13 million people, or nearly 60 per cent of the population. Nine million of those people are directly dependent on agriculture for food and income.

“If we don’t act now, the plague could last years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This could very well be a last window of opportunity to avert an extended crisis,” said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva, who stressed that prevention and early action are key.

The agency pointed out that timely control of the locust upsurge in Madagascar at an early stage would have cost $14.5 million in 2011-2012. However, FAO only received half the necessary funding. Another campaign had to be launched, but that received barely a quarter of the required funds in 2011-2012, it added.

Funding will need to be allocated by July to have all the supplies and personnel in place to mount a wide-scale anti-locust campaign starting in September, FAO said.

“FAO’s locust control programme needs to be fully funded in order to monitor the locust situation throughout the whole contaminated area and to carry out well-targeted aerial control operations,” stated the agency.

“Otherwise, undetected or uncontrolled locust populations will continue to breed and produce more swarms. The plague would therefore last several years, controlling it will be lengthier and more expensive and it will severely affect food security, nutrition and livelihoods.”

The full programme that is needed to return the locust plague to a recession requires over $41.5 million over the next three years. The programme includes: improving the monitoring and analysis of the locust situation; large-scale aerial and ground spraying and related training; monitoring and mitigating the effect of control operations on health and the environment; and measuring the impact of anti-locust campaigns and the damages to crops and pasture.

A recent FAO assessment mission on the impact of the current locust plague in Madagascar found that rice and maize losses due to the locusts in some parts of the country vary from 40 to 70 per cent of the crop, with 100 per cent losses on certain plots.

A joint UN crop and food security assessment mission is currently on the ground to measure the locust’s damages to food security and livelihoods. More detailed data analysis will be available in July, but the resources to start preparation for the field actions have to be available now, FAO stressed.

The agency estimates that losses in rice production could be up to 630,000 tonnes, or about 25 per cent of total demand for rice in Madagascar. Rice is the main staple in the country, where 80 per cent of the population lives on less than a dollar per day.

“I have spent the past two days seeing for myself the effects of the terrible food and nutrition crisis that is now affecting at least 4.6 million people in Mali, as well as the difficulties faced by Malians affected by insecurity in the north,” the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, said during her trip to the African country.

Pointing to her Tuesday visit to the Gabriel Toure nutrition centre in Bamako, the Malian capital, Ms. Amos noted that treatments costing just $100 were restoring to health numerous children affected by severe acute malnutrition and that nearly 150,000 children had been treated in similar facilities across the country.

However, despite the progress, Amos voiced concern that not enough was being done and urged donors to step up with their contributions.

“There are too many other children who are not being reached because we do not have the money to increase our operations everywhere,” she warned. “We asked for $213 million to provide life-saving projects this year; less than half of that has been provided.”

Mali is located in the Sahel region, a semi-arid belt crossing the north of Africa, which is highly exposed to the threat of famine and where 1.1 million children are currently at risk of severe acute malnutrition.

A recent report released by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that Mali’s food situation was especially precarious as a plague of locusts in the country’s north was spreading and threatening agricultural production in the rest of the country.

Following her visit on Wednesday to the city of Mopti, Amos acknowledged that the delicate humanitarian situation caused by the food crisis was being further compounded by continued instability and insecurity caused by violence in the north.

In January, fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels broke out in the country’s north. The clashes, as well as the proliferation of armed groups in the region and political instability in the wake of a military coup d’état in March, have led the displacement of an estimated 440,000 people.

Amos observed the shipment of supplies being sent by river barge from Mopti to beleaguered towns in the north of the country, including the historic city of Timbuktu, which has been in rebel hands in since April.

“There are many people we cannot reach because so many places are too dangerous for relief organizations to work,” Amos continued, adding that “without additional support, we are not going to reach everyone who needs help.”

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the past several weeks have provided signs of growing distress across the African country with high food prices, empty silos and granaries, and a reduced cereal harvest, aggravating the country’s food security outlook.

“Late and erratic rains, poor agricultural practices, constrained access to inputs, and a reduction in planted area have all contributed to reducing the national cereal harvest by 33 per cent this year,” WFP said in a news release on its Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment (ZimVAC). It further noted that a lack of diversified livelihoods and the rising cost of living were combining to create a perfect storm of income and food insecurity.

WFP, in fact, pointed out that according to the ZimVAC, over 1.6 million Zimbabweans will be in need of food assistance during the peak hunger period spanning January to March 2013.

ZimVAC is an annual study conducted by the Government of Zimbabwe in collaboration with UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in order to estimate national food insecurity levels.

In response to the deteriorating food situation, the UN agency announced it was scaling up operations in conjunction with the Government and other stakeholders to provide a combination of food distribution and cash transfers to those in need.

The WFP further noted that it would require approximately $119 million to complete its operations in Zimbabwe until the end of March 2013, though it said that almost three-quarters of the funding has not yet been accounted for.