Famine fears rise after hurricane wrecks Haiti's bread-basket
LES CAYES- Hurricane Matthew tore up large tracts of food crops as well as mature coffee and cocoa plantations when it ravaged Haiti's fertile south last week, with a U.N. official expressing concern about possible famine in the poorest nation in the Americas.
The destruction of crops like rice, corn and beans in the area puts more than 100,000 children at risk of acute malnutrition, the United Nations said on Friday, in a Caribbean country where half the population already was underfed before the powerful hurricane hit.
While about half of Haiti's food supply is imported, much of what it does produce is grown in the south.
As well as tearing up food staples and filling fields with sea water and trash, the storm uprooted plantations of cocoa, coffee and fruit trees, cash crops that are exported and that experts said will take at least five years to grow back.
