(2024-02) WFP VAM Bulletin, February 2024: Food Security Analysis

Haiti February 2024 WFP VAM Bulletin Food security analysis Key points Around 7.8 million people are estimated to have insufficient food consumption in Haiti in February 2023, which indicates that the situation deteriorates again after slight improvement observed in January 2024. The most affected departements are West, Grande’Anse, Centre and Nippes, with prevalence rates comprised between 65 and 69%. The three main shocks experienced by Haitian households in January 2024 were intra-family shocks (illness, death, job loss, etc.) for 31% of households, economic shocks (commodity, food prices) for 31% of households, and man-made shocks (violence, insecurity, fire, theft of productive assets, etc.) for 22% of households. Important losses in cropland surface areas were detected in the department of Artibonite using satellite imagery for the main agricultural season at the end of 2023. Such farmland abandonment occurred on the eastern side February 2024 1. Food security monitoring [A] After a slight improvement in January, food consumption in Haiti deteriorates again in February JANUARY 2024 7.8M -0.70M DECREASE with insufficient food consumption in February 2024 +0.44M increase from 3 months ago The latest data for February 2024 estimates that the food security situation has begun to deteriorate again in Haiti, with around 440,000 more people1 with insufficient food consumption2 in midFebruary 2024, compared with one month earlier. This can be explained by the multiple impacts of protests and roadblocks on the transportation of supplies and food prices. This brings the estimated number of people with poor or borderline food consumption to around 7.8 million as of mid-February 2024. Figure 1. Prevalence (% of households) of insufficient food consumption in Haiti in January 2024. Source: WFP, Geopoll/HungerMapLIVE (January 2024) This deterioration in Haiti’s food consumption comes after a slight improvement observed in January 2024 (see Figure 2): about 63% of households nationwide had insufficient food consumption, a rate relatively lower than the ones reached at the end of 2023 (71 to 72% - the highest national prevalence rates ever recorded since the WFP monitoring tool began operating in September 2021). According to the map (Figure 1), the situation was more specifically alarming in West (69%), Grande’Anse (67%), Centre (67%) and Nippes (65%). In line with the national trend for that month, the situation improved in all departements from Dec 2023 to Jan 2024 - which can be explained by the following reasons : (1) the end-of-year festivities, when households Insufficient food consumption (FCS Poor or Borderline) receive more food and money from abroad than usual, normally induce an increase in the frequency and the diversity of people’s diets - a pattern that is commonly observed in food security monitoring at this time of year ; and (2) the favourable consequences of the relative drop observed in the food inflation rate from 35% in August 2023 to 28% in December 2023. In addition, the percentage of households using emergency or crisis coping strategies at national level has fallen steadily for the Figure 2. Monthly trend (in % of households) of insufficient food consumption in Haiti from Jan last five months, from 67% in September 2023 to 62% in January 2024, and more 2023 to Jan 2024. Source: WFP, Geopoll/ HungerMapLIVE than two households out fo three reported a drop in income in January. Focus metropolitan area of Port-au-prince JANUARY 2024 PA Figure 3. Prevalence (% of households) of insufficient food consumption in ZM-PAP in January 2024. Source: WFP, Geopoll/HungerMapLIVE -0.18M DECREASE from 3 months ago In the Port-au-Prince with insufficient food consumption in metropolitan area, -0.05M DECREASE January 2024 1.6 million people in ZM-PAP from 1 month ago (around 71% of households) have insufficient food consumption in January 2023, compared with 78% three months before, in October 2023. The global trend in the metropolitan area is a slight improvement, as shown in Figure 4. However, at commune level (see Figure 3), the data indicates that the situation has deteriorated from Dec 2023 to Jan 2024 in Cité-Soleil (82% households with poor or borderline food consumption), Portau-Prince (81%), Croix-des-Bouquets (72%) and Pétion-Ville (67%). Besides, Insufficient food consumption (FCS Poor or Borderline) the percentage of households using emergency or crisis coping strategies in the metropolitan area is on the rise, reaching 63%, against 57% the Figure 4. Monthly trend (in % of houseprevious month; this is one of the holds) of insufficient food consumption in ZM-PAP from Jan 2023 to Jan 2024. highest rates ever recorded since Source: WFP, Geopoll/HungerMapLIVE September 2022. 1 2 February 2024 WFP VAM Bulletin 1.6M The numbers of people with insufficient food consumption are not comparable with IPC food insecure figures. The food consumption is considered insufficient when the Food Consumption Score (FCS) is Poor or Borderline. 2. CROPLAND CHANGE analysis [B] Artibonite rice plain : 3,000 hectares of cultivated land abandoned At the end of 2023, important losses in crop areas were detected in the department of Artibonite using satellite imagery. Such farmland abandonment occurred on the eastern side of the road (RN1) crossing the agricultural plain - an area where insecurity has intensified in the recent years. The main growing season, which normally accounts for more than 50% of the annual agricultural production at national level, extends approximately from August to December in Haiti. In 2023, according to this analysis, nearly 3,000 hectares of agricultural land were abandoned in the Artibonite plain only, compared to the same period in 2018 (taken as a “pre-crisis” reference year, before the beginning of the current crisis in Haiti). The geographical extent of the farmland losses is shown in Figure 6 (map below) in red. The security situation in the department of Artibonite has deteriorated since 2018, with a intensification of violences after July 2022 (see Figure 5). In November 2022 50 only one day of early Novem40 ber 2022, nearly fifty fatalities were recorded in the area. This 30 security context is due to the 20 July 2022 presence of several armed 10 groups, whose influence mainly extends geographically in a "triangle" area comprised Figure 5. Daily number of fatalities caused by violent events from 01 between Carrefour Bois-deJanuary 2019 to 01 January 2024 in Artibonite (Haiti). Source: ACLED Chaux, Liancourt and PetiteRivière-de-l'Artibonite (black symbols on map below). Similar patterns of cropland abandonment had already been observed in April 2023 for the offseason crops over the same area3. A large proportion of cropland fields located in this area were abandoned in 2023, more specifically located in the commune of Dessalines. To a lesser extent, newly cultivated field were also detected in 2023 compared to 2018 (1,500 ha in total), mostly in lower Artibonite located west of RN1 road. This concerns the communes of Grande Saline and Desdunes which are less well irrigated than those located upstream (east of RN1). This absolute loss in agricultural land and this apparent “movement” of agricultural workforce from upper to lower Artibonite could be linked to the influence of armed violence : according to WFP’s monitoring system data, in the communes where cropland areas were abandoned (Dessalines, Petite-Rivière-de-l'Artibonite, Verrettes), nearly one in three households (32%) reported being directly affected by armed violence in 2023, against 12% in 2022. Meanwhile, in the communes of Desdunes and Grande Saline, where newly cultivated land was detected, this proportion is 7% in 2023 against 5% in 2022. This reflects the tendency of the population to cultivate in safer areas. In terms of impacts on food security in those two distinct zones, the number of households with insufficient food consumption increased by 17 percentage points between 2022 and 2023 (from 40% to 57%) in areas with cropland abandonment - which corresponds to a situation of high food insecurity; while it decreased by 5 percentage points (from 33% in 2022 to 27% in 2023) in areas with new crops detected. DATA SOURCES Administrative boundaries : OCHA, CNIGS (2018) Roads and Localities : OpenStreetMap (2023) Satellite imagery used for cropland change detection: ESA/Copernicus, Sentinel-2 acquired between 01 Aug and 10 Dec of 2023 and 2018 Basemap : Sentinel-2 composite median [01Aug-01Dec] 2023 Insecurity hotspots : ACLED, number of violent events and fatalities between 01 Dec 2018 and 01 Dec 2023 ANALYSIS WFP Haiti CO, RAM unit Produced on 09 February 2024 Figure 6. Main season cropland change in 2023 (versus 2018) in Artibonite’s rice plain, Haiti. Main season is approximated by 01 August - 01 December. 3 February 2024 WFP VAM Bulletin See the report published in April 2023 by WFP on the topic : https://reliefweb.int/report/haiti/haiti-april-2023-cropland-change-analysis-artibonite-season methodologies [A] WFP’s continuous, near real-time monitoring system (HungerMapLIVE) [B] Cropland change detection from Earth Observation imagery This system collects thousands of survey data points per day remotely, through live calls from call centers around the world, including Haiti. The sample is 116 households per department and 120 per commune in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area, selected monthly by random telephone dialing, to be interviewed. This is statistically considered enough for trend monitoring. These analyses are used to monitor some key food security indicators, such as insufficient food consumption or household coping strategies. Monitoring their evolution over time could thus constitute an alert mechanism for programmatic readjustments, and possibly an advocacy tool for triggering a food security classification exercise (IPC). The prevalence rates of insufficient food consumption presented in this bulletin should not be compared with the proportion of food insecure people as calculated and provided by the IPC classification exercises - which consider many more indicators than insufficient food consumption and coping strategies. The cropland change analysis consists of the comparison of Earth Observation products derived from Sentinel-2 satellite images. The Sentinel is a constellation of satellites launched and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2016. The data is freely available via the European Commission's Copernicus programme. Sentinel-2 images are acquired every five days and have a spatial resolution of 10 meters. Such characteristics make Sentinel-2 data particularly well-suited for cropland monitoring in the area of interest. The period considered to evaluate the main season cropland areas is 1 August to 10 December. About twenty Sentinel-2 images are acquired during this period for each year, then processed to monitor the temporal evolution of the vegetation (by calculating NDVI values as a proxy) for each image. This allows to single out cultivated areas from other soil types due to the temporal NDVI curve corresponding to the different stages of the season: fields preparation, sowing, growing, and harvesting. The processing of the Sentinel-2 images is carried out with the Google Earth Engine platform. Other analysis steps are conducted with QGIS software. For more details: hungermap.wfp.org/ For more details: doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVI4-W2-2021-9-2021 World Food Programme | Haiti Karibe Hotel, Juvenat 7 Route du Canapé-Vert, 1610 Petion Ville Contacts: Smaila GNEGNE Head of RAM unit smaila.gnegne@wfp.org Laure BOUDINAUD Geospatial data analyst laure.boudinaud@wfp.org @WFP_Haiti Cover photo : Theresa Piorr © WFP (2022)