Al Jazeera’s Julie de Pimodan reports on efforts to push consumer crops up the priority list for Yemen’s farmers, most of whom can make more money growing a leafy narcotic known as qat: “Like most Yemeni householders suffering from soaring food prices, Hussein, a 38-year-old Yemeni taxi-driver, is cutting back on other expenses to ensure his family has their minimum requirements.

“The cost of a kilo of wheat has tripled in the last couple of months, I have nine children to feed, how can I send my daughters to school?” he told Al Jazeera.

“Life is not easy these days, we need the government to respond,” he added while negotiating over the price of a bag of qat in a crowded street in the Yemeni capital.

Health care and education are now lower on his priority list, but giving up qat, which costs on average $5 a day, is out of the question.

In a country where the World Bank says half the population lives on less than $2 a day, householders continue to spend 10 per cent of their income on qat, which the government now says is consuming Yemen’s most fundamental resources.”

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