The drought, which began in 2001, has devastated sorghum and maize crops.
On the day the insurgency hit Dabna, Amos was due to harvest his maize crops.
Here, as elsewhere, the rice and maize crops could not be harvested and the threat of famine is looming.
Last year, Tanzania's farmers produced one of the biggest maize crops the country has ever seen.
A cold start to the growing season and summer flooding has badly damaged rice and maize crops.
The United States Department of Agriculture estimates this year's soyabean and maize crops will be the largest and second- largest ever, respectively.
It has since spread in concentric circles each year and is now eating into maize crops in Germany and Italy.These problems are onerous, but most are probably tractable.
It was mid-afternoon when a huge boom of thunder startled the Ramírez family as they tended their maize crops in the tiny mountainous community of El Encinal, in Mexico's central state of Guanajuato.
They had recently begun to raid maize crops and steal chickens, causing such serious and persistent damage that many Ghanaians were keeping their young children out of school to help guard family farms.
Charles Lomari, in his 60s, explains that the water level is very low once again, and the group, from the Napak irrigation scheme, is digging an emergency channel to ensure that they have water for their maize crops.
More than 10,000 people are homeless as flooding swept away homes, roads and maize crops in the hunger-stricken Gwembe district south of the capital, Lusaka, officials said.
