Ebola Stokes Liberian Food Shortage as Farmers Eat Seeds
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The Ebola crisis is exacerbating food shortages in Liberia as a lack of labor hinders production and hungry rice farmers eat the seeds they’d normally hold back for planting next season.
Ebola will leave a lasting impact of malnutrition even as the number of new cases of the deadly disease is beginning to slow, Charles McClain, a deputy minister at the country’s Agriculture Ministry, said yesterday in an interview at an international conference on nutrition at the United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organization in Rome. About a third of Liberia’s 4 million people were already undernourished before the Ebola outbreak, and labor shortages stemming from the disease are affecting production, he said.