Focus on food security

Afghanistan, which has suffered tremendously due to more than 20 years of conflict and the worst drought in living memory, needs to look beyond short-term aid in order to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure food security, UN officials and agricultural experts told IRIN. "We have to get out of the fire-brigade approach," Shukri Ahmed, an economist at the Global Information and Early Warning System of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IRIN from Rome. "We have to go for a medium- and long-term plan to end food insecurity." Ahmed explained that this did not mean that emergency food relief was not required - some six million people in Afghanistan remained highly vulnerable to food insecurity and need relief food assistance over the next year. Alejandro Chicheri, the World Food Programme (WFP) spokesman in the Afghan capital, Kabul, told IRIN that total cereal production in Afghanistan for 2002 would be about 3.5 million mt, which is 82 percent above last year's drought-affected crop. He pointed out, however, that "some 219,000 tonnes of emergency food aid has been pledged, or is already in the pipeline. But that leaves an uncovered gap of 249,000 tonnes." Drought, Chicheri said, had moved from the north to the south of the country, making the latter an area of concern. Southern Afghanistan also accommodates the largest number of internally displaced people - all dependent on food aid. According to a joint report by WFP and the FAO, humanitarian concerns for Afghanistan were raised by a number of factors, including drought, military and political upheavals, devastating earthquakes in the north, and locust infestation during the 2002 crop year. However, despite all the odds, overall cereal production has recovered strongly, mainly due to increased and timely rainfall. "Rain-fed wheat, in particular, has recovered significantly in major growing areas of the north and western provinces compared to the previous three drought- affected years," the FAO said. Aggregate wheat production, the main Afghan staple, is estimated at 2.69 million tonnes, some 67 percent more than was achieved last year. "Despite the recovery of agricultural production, millions of Afghans, particularly pastoralist Kuchis [nomads], have little or no access to food due to serious erosion of their purchasing power and loss of productive assets," Ahmed explained. Kuchis constitute about 1.5 million of the country's total population of about 22 million. The drought, which, according to Ahmed, has wrought even more destruction in the country than the war, has hit the Kuchis very hard. Kuchis largely depend on livestock, which has declined by 40 percent since 1998. An FAO survey in March 2002 showed that this livestock population might have declined even more due to continued distress-selling of animals during the summer and autumn of last year. "These losses may be as high as 90 to 95 percent for sheep and goats, and 85 percent for camels," it noted. The same view is expressed in a report by the Feinstein International Famine Centre (FIFC) at Tufts University, USA. "More than two decades of war and political instability have rendered Afghanistan fundamentally vulnerable to food insecurity," the FIFC said. "Three, and in some places four, years of drought have overwhelmed the capacity of Afghan communities to cope with the loss of agriculture and livestock production, unemployment and burgeoning debt burdens," it added. Wah Mohammad, a father of five in southern Afghanistan, told IRIN that his family was hungry most of the time and survived by begging for food, sometimes from passing truck drivers carrying supplies. "We were given some food a few months ago, but we have run out now. The only thing that touches our mouths these days is dust," he said. His desperation is replicated almost everywhere in Afghanistan. Baaz Ali, 50, living at the Hisrashahi camp in the eastern city of Jalalabad said he was selling water melons on the streets, but was not earning enough to feed his family of six. "All we can do now is beg for food," he said. "My wife has to comfort our children when they cry because they don't have enough to eat," he added, saying that their daily diet was limited to tea and bread. But Ahmed said Afghanistan was not a hopeless case despite all the negative indicators. "There is something there to put your money on," he added, asserting that basic agricultural infrastructure could be rehabilitated through investment and hard work. According to Ahmed, investment in primary and secondary roads and in irrigation, attention to livestock development, increasing veterinary assistance, bringing about the availability of affordable credit and setting up micro-finance schemes would all help Afghanistan stand on its own feet. Ahmed recalled that about 20 years ago 60 percent of the world's imports of dried fruit originated in Afghanistan. "The potential is there, although investments in infrastructure are needed." He said he believed that with sustained investment in agriculture, the people of Afghanistan could produce enough cereals, fruits, vegetables and livestock to meet their needs. However, rapid recovery was hindered by structural weaknesses in the Afghan rural socioeconomic setting. "The predominant role of food aid during a recovery period - apart from improving the diet - will therefore be to assist the poorest of the rural population in rebuilding an asset base for their livelihood by spending less of their cash resources on basic food," the FAO/WFP report said. It also emphasised that throughout Afghanistan a continuing crisis affecting purchasing power, production and credit was directly threatening household food security. "Deepening poverty has led to high overall debt burdens, widespread delinquency on loan payments and outright default." The FIFC report stressed the need to provide Afghanistan with generous, sustained and strategic humanitarian and development assistance in order to save lives and restore livelihoods. "There is a role for targeted, balanced and long-term programmes of food assistance... The international community must commit [itself] to a multi-year strategy of assistance to Afghanistan at levels that exceed even current spending patterns," it said.