This region comprises Madagascar, Mauritius, the Comoros, and the Seychelles. During the 1990's an estimated 8.7 million people lived in the rural areas, 65 percent of whom lived at the subsistence level. Only 5.2 percent of Madagascar's total land area (7.4 million acres) was under cultivation. Of the total land area, 50.7 percent supported livestock production, while 16 percent (1.2 million acres) of the land under cultivation was irrigated.
Cassava, planted almost everywhere on the island, is grown as well as corn and sweet potatoes, with smaller quantities of cotton, bananas, and cloves. The fisheries sector, especially the export of shrimp, has been the most rapidly growing area of the agricultural economy in the Indian Ocean Islands region.
Mauritius has 30,000 acres of sugarcane plantations that have had one of the highest sugarcane and sugar yields in the world. The Seychelles have a total land area of only 72 square miles (187 square kilometers), of which only 3,000 acres are cultivated. This 3 percent of the land area accounts for only 4 percent of the island nation's economy. The Comoros' agriculture is heavily weighted toward rice, the staple food of the populace.
|
