ADRA India has initiated a $10,000USD emergency response, called MIZOFAM, to the rice famine that is affecting approximately 1 million people throughout the northeastern state of Mizoram which borders Myanmar. The famine is caused by a plague of rats, and usually occurs every 48 years, as the bamboo that is native in the state and surrounding regions, produces a special flower that triggers a mass movement of rats. After the rats ate all the bamboo’s flowers, they moved onto the rice crops devastating more than 90% of Mizoram’s rice paddies and other crops.

The crisis is increased by the fact that most families are ‘slash and burn’ farmers, meaning that they only have small and temporary plots to cultivate their crops. The severe food shortage has forced many families to have only one meal per day, and search for food in surrounding forests, eating wild berries, yams and roots in an attempt to survive.

ADRA India has completed an assessment and has had meetings with and is coordinating its response with ECHO, Actionaid, UNICEF and Save the Children, for the MIZOFAM intervention as well as any larger scale emergency food security intervention for the famine affected families of Mizoram. ADRA India has found that there are 3 main vulnerability factors of poverty, displacement and location that are key issues to be addressed in the Emergency Response. The poverty factor indicates that the most affected families are the poorest with the least amount land, meaning that most if not all of their crops have been destroyed. The displacement factor indicates that many families are nomadic and move around as shifting cultivators, and that any potential land they would cultivate has also been destroyed. The location factor indicates that the mountainous terrain in Mizoram makes a lot of communities impossible to reach by car or road, often leaving transport by foot or by air as the only options for reaching these families.

To donate or find out more about ADRA India’s Emergency Management Program, please visit our website http://www.adraindia.org.

ADRA India provides community development and emergency management without regard to political or religious association, age, gender, race, or ethnicity.

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ADRA India is a Christian humanitarian agency, fighting to alleviate poverty, disease and suffering in India.