BUDJALA, Democratic Republic of Congo — “We are in a province with an agropastoral vocation,” says Jean Guillaume Ngbanga Masolo, provincial inspector for agriculture in South Ubangi province. From his office in the capital, Gemena, Ngbanga Masolo oversees a territory facing chronic food insecurity. ”We have around 987,000 farming households [in the province],” he says, “everyone lives off agriculture. The community in the countryside is hardworking, but they face difficulties relating to tools, finances and technical skills.” More than 25 million people across the Democratic Republic of Congo face acute food insecurity due to armed conflict, poor infrastructure, and shocks to the national economy, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale developed by the U.N. While the worst-affected areas are in conflict-wracked provinces in the country’s east, like Ituri and North and South Kivu, the IPC’s most recent analysis found nearly three-quarters of South Ubangi’s population face crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse — amounting to more than 2.4 million people. We traveled through the province on an overloaded motorbike for seven days to see firsthand the challenges facing its inhabitants and to examine the impacts of large plantations on food security and the communities that live around them. What we found is a territory that — despite 80% of inhabitants working as farmers — struggles to feed itself, and worrying signs that government support for industrial agriculture may create as many problems as it solves. Woman cooking on an open fire, Budjala territoire. Many…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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