Thede Connection- HAITI/Zambia: Drought! by Cory (also a reason chocolate prices are up)

El Nino is hitting SW Zambia area with drought and NE area with flooding, most of southern Africa (red shaded in map) with abnormal heat and the yellow area is abnormal dryness

"Climate Prediction Center's Africa Hazards Outlook
For USAID/FEWS-NET 22-28 Feb. 2024
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/international/africa/africa_hazard.pdf

Jembo is at the blue dot between the "2"s.

We haven't had any rain since our arrival a month ago and the past few weeks have been mostly sunny with highs in the low 90's and humidity percent in the 30's.

The climate center says rapidly worsening conditions are likely to continue across much of southern Africa for the coming week.

Closer to home for most of our friends, this shows at least part of the reason for record high cocoa prices since west Africa grows most of the world's chocolate and they have also been somewhat dry.

I went with the dean of students to a mill in Choma to help get wholesale priced cornmeal for the students.

Crowd at a cornmeal outlet in Choma and stores will
be busier next week from end-of-month payday.

Many Zambians are struggling with their food budget because last year the harvest was poor from a short rainy season and this year is worse.

Farm prices for corn are about triple a year ago and the wholesale cornmeal is only about 22 cents per pound, which shows how low the cost of their staple food usually is.

We heard on a video recently about the firm corn porridge "nshima" which is "like a religion for Zambians, who eat it at least once a day and say nothing else will fill them up".

The first shop only had 15 of the 55 pound bags, half of what we planned to buy.

They said to go quickly to the other mill outlet because they may be out also soon.

There was a big crowd (the government recently started selling corn reserves at a reduced price) and the sales person said to go direct to the mill.

Corn fields on the way to Choma

We arrived before noon, waited, and after showing a school letterhead they let us in, weighed the truck and directed us to the warehouse.

At 1pm we were about to be served and the employees went on break until about 2:15.

After a large truck was mostly filled we finally had all the cornmeal about 3pm - in hindsight we should have bought the 22 pound bags at the first shop for a slightly higher price.

Please join us praying for good rains!

Also that the school well keeps working, which also waters the new trees - we planned to check with a well company about flushing the sand out of the well but ran out of time.

The pump flow is slowing so it runs all day, most of the student vegetable gardens can't be watered, and we can't keep raising the pump as was done last year as the borehole slowly fills with sand.

Many of the fields I saw on the way to Choma are beyond recovery.

Jembo is a bit less sandy than the Choma area but most of the corn here is also rapidly losing yield potential or completely failing.

Zambia usually exports corn so the surrounding countries will also suffer, especially the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the northern border.

The first outlet in Choma

Corn prices were many times higher in their cities so Zambia increased the farm price by 55 percent last May, at least partly to reduce smuggling (like corn under sand in dump trucks) and recently our local market price has doubled.