MARADI, Niger — While mothers continue to bring children weak with hunger to feeding centers, market stalls are filled with food — but at prices out of reach of many in Niger.

"It is the government's job to deal with the hungry, we the traders are here for business," said Ibrahim Baye, who sells millet, a staple in Niger, at a Maradi market.

The well-stocked markets are deceptive. The food shortage is real. Last year locusts, in the worst invasion in 15 years, ravaged 7,000 square miles of Niger farmland. That and a subsequent drought cut cereal production by 15 percent, according to the United Nations.

Hunger was a problem in Niger before the locusts and drought. Today, more than one-third of the nearly 12 million people in Niger face severe food shortages. Children are most at risk.

Yesterday, Baye shooed away beggars staring at the heaped food on display. A friend sitting with him who gave only one name, Louali, said the grains on display had been stockpiled "and traders wait until the lean season to sell at double its price."

Prices have increased substantially. A bag of 220 pounds of millet went from $23 to $44.

Few can afford that in the second-poorest nation in the world, where 64 percent of the people survive on less than $1 a day.

Information

U.N. World Food Program: www.wfp.org

Oxfam: www.oxfam.org.uk

Hundreds of mothers who cannot buy turn up daily at feeding centers such as that run by Doctors Without Borders in Aguié, 28 miles east of Maradi.

"At this time last year, we had 300 admissions in our centers. Today, the number stands at 1,037," Dr. Ibrahima Alzouma said. "We are just completely overwhelmed."

Children have been left so fragile that even a change in the weather can be a threat. Doctors say a fine rain yesterday, the first in 12 days, and slightly lower temperatures almost killed Firdaoussou Bassirou.

Firdaoussou, 7 months old and weighing about 5 ½ pounds — the weight of a newborn — was moved into the intensive-care unit after her temperature dropped. Her mother watched as doctors tried to place a drip on Firdaoussou's collapsed veins.

Until international food reaches the most vulnerable, UNICEF is trying to bridge the gap by setting up community-managed cereal banks for those who can afford to pay for food.

With an initial stock of 10 tons, 3,000 villagers in Tsaki and surrounding villages can buy millet at less than half the market price.

With the $7 Khadija Sani's husband earned plowing somebody else's farm last week, Sani walked nearly one hour to buy subsidized millet.

"I left the house completely empty," said Sani, 30, with her baby, one of nine children, nestled on her back. "I don't know when I'll go home but at least I will not come back empty-handed."

She was among 200 women dressed in rainbow-color robes who were waiting when community leaders opened the big iron gates of the cereal bank's storage room yesterday.

To avoid speculation or the millet ending up in local markets, only a weekly allotment is sold to each family.

"We know here the exact size of each household," said Moustapha Chetima, a UNICEF officer in charge of rural development. "This is a small community ... and we don't want people to stock the food when others don't have any."

The experiment is yielding results throughout the region of Maradi and Zinder, where 200 cereal banks have been set up. In 2004, some 78,241 people regularly purchased rations of millet in Aguié's cereal bank.

The U.N. food agency was looking ahead yesterday, appealing for $4 million to provide Niger's farmers with seeds for the next planting season and to replenish the livestock of families that have lost or been forced to sell their animals.