Nearly 1.3 million people in the Central African Republic (CAR), out of a population of 4.6 million, urgently need food aid, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Monday. According to dpa, the figure was "nearly double the estimated level in February 2013," and risked rising even more dramatically next year if farmers are not helped to prepare for the upcoming planting season, the Rome-based agency said. Farmers are lacking seeds, livestock and equipment as they have been looted or sold off to raise money to buy food, FAO said, stressing that the recent dispatch of international peacekeepers to war-ravaged CAR should help it reach people in need. "Failure to assist (farmers) will bring a serious deterioration of the food security situation and a massive need for protracted food assistance," FAO's regional representative Bukar Tijani said in a statement.
