Despite rapidly deteriorating food security conditions in pastoral and western agropastoral areas, and steep increases in food prices in markets around the country, food security in February is better than conditions from the same time last year. In other pastoral areas and parts of the farm belt, harvests of irrigated and flood-recession crops ("walo" and bottomland crops) have helped bolster household grain availability. However, shocks such as a sudden increase in cereal prices and/or an even steeper drop in prices for small livestock, which is highly likely in the face of current market trends, could seriously weaken food security conditions between now and the end of this year's rainy season. Households in zones dependent on rain-fed crops and migratory herding, as well as market-dependent households in urban slums and shantytowns on the outskirts of urban areas are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity as a result of such shocks.

Indeed, there are signs that food insecurity is increasing in urban slums and peri-urban areas due to sharp increases in prices for basic food items and due to a lack of social services.

Food access is deteriorating in rain-fed farming areas in the southeast, the northern Senegal River Valley, and the central reaches of agropastoral areas due to mediocre harvests of rain-fed grain crops for the 2007/08 season in the wake of poor rainfall conditions and shortages of seeds. Another factor hindering food access is the Government of Mali's ban on grain exports since early December 2007.

The return of 24,000 Mauritanian refugees could also create food insecurity in receiving areas if the government, the World Food Program (WFP) and the U N High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) are unable to provide sufficient resources to assist this population group.

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