Towards new agricultural practices to mitigate food insecurity in southern Madagascar

The south of Madagascar suffers from recurrent droughts with catastrophic effects on the human population and the globally unique biodiversity alike. During these times and shortly thereafter, households from only two out of 24 villages with a total of 374 households achieve food security and most households resort to food resources provided by the remaining forests and fallow land. This poses the question why forest food resources persist and remain available even when agricultural crops fail. The main di!erence seems to be that the majority of agricultural crops are annual plants that need to be replanted for each growing cycle and do not provide anything if the regular harvest fails, while 48 of 50 forest food resources used by people during times of food shortage are perennial and often woody species that can tolerate prolonged droughts. For improved food security, annual crops could be replaced by, or combined with, perennial crops in various agroforestry systems. These agroforestry systems could be designed to benefit humans and extend the remaining forest habitats for native plants and animals alike