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Unveiling the agricultural landscape of the Comoros

An analysis of agricultural production and yields










Weber, R., Masson, S., Ibrahim, C., Tanios, C. & Morales Opazo, C. 2025. Unveiling the agricultural landscape of the Comoros  An analysis of agricultural production and yields. Rome, FAO.



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    This policy brief provides a snapshot of agricultural production, productivity and fertilizer use in the Comoros, a small island developing state, where up-to-date information on the agrifood systems has been lacking. In 2021, FAO, in cooperation with the Comorian Ministry of Agriculture collected representative and spatially detailed data at the micro-level on agriculture, food security and poverty. The results show that banana and cassava are the most important crops in terms of agricultural production and yields. For most of the yields, estimates are low or almost half compared to the average yields observed in other countries. This is likely due to the practices applied by producers, notably the non-optimization of agricultural inputs, the prevalence of manual farming, an aging agricultural workforce and low levels of literacy.
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    The International Conference on Domestication and Commercialization of Non-Timber Forest Products in Agroforestry Systems, hosted by ICRAF, was held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 19 to 23 February 1996. This was the first world-level meeting to be held exclusively to draw attention to issues dealing with domestication and commercialization of non-timber forest products in agroforestry systems.
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    The Comoros, a small island developing state (SIDS) ranking among the poorest nations in Africa, is facing numerous challenges that make it particularly vulnerable to food insecurity: as a remotely located, net-food importing country with a small landmass, limited agricultural land and high exposure to natural catastrophes, the Comoros’ food security is particularly vulnerable to external shocks. While being a net-food importer, agriculture is an essential sector and livelihood source, contributing 30 percent to gross domestic product in 2015. This makes the Comoros a rare exemption across small island developing states. Investing in the Comoros’ agrifood systems and increasing their efficiency is essential to increase food security. So far, a lack of data in the Comoros’ agrifood systems has limited the scope of analyses. The use of remotely sensed data for crop yield models presents a cost-effective opportunity for the Comoros to continuously monitor its agricultural sector, and reduce its data gap and the high cost associated with surveys. Based on two different sensors, MODIS-TERRA and Sentinel-2, and a unique FAO survey conducted in 2021 which georeferenced farm plots, we derive a method to calibrate vegetation indices (NDVI) as a proxy for crop yield in the Comoros. Our results suggest that the MODIS sensor is not well adapted to estimate yields in the Comoros. Plots are on average less than 1 ha, while the MODIS spatial resolution is 250 m by 250 m which leads to less consistency and less variation within a plot. Sentinel 2 images seem more consistent with survey-based crop yield estimates. We finally managed to proxy manioc yields by putting restrictions on the highest yields producers. The coefficient of determination is up to 0.28 when dealing with farmers producing at least 40 percent of manioc.

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