No end in sight to food shortages

On the brink of its fifth consecutive harvest failure, concern is mounting in Swaziland as food shortages continue. "The World Food Programme (WFP) has moved from an emergency response to recovery, but there is still a huge demand for relief food distribution," Catherine Feeney, WFP's Deputy Country Director, told IRIN. The organisation is already feeding 250,000 people, nearly a quarter of the population, but in the face of a "triple threat" - the combination of food insecurity, poverty and HIV/AIDS - merely food aid is not enough, Feeney remarked. According to Khanyisile Mabuza, Assistant Representative of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), "the main challenges now are HIV/AIDS, drought, increases in production costs, wild weeds affecting pastures and crop production, and a consistent decline in agricultural production". "With a 42.6 percent prevalence rate, HIV/AIDS is depleting the workforce. That, combined with five years of drought, mean there is a real sense of despondency," Feeney commented. According to the 2004/05 Crop and Food Supply Assessment, jointly conducted by FAO and WFP, production of the country's staple food, maize, has been in a long-term decline, dropping by 70 percent over the last five years in some areas. FAO estimates that only 45-50 percent of available land is still being used for farming and, according to WFP, Lowveld farmers have only ploughed 10 percent of their arable land. Land use has been diminishing, mainly due to delayed rains, low market prices for maize, lack of income to pay for increasingly expensive inputs, lack of credit, high risk of making a loss from agriculture and shortages of seeds for alternative crops to cereals, which has also been hampering crop diversification. Suggestions have been made that the availability of food aid is another factor. "To a certain extent there is a dependency on aid - it's a vicious circle," Mabuza commented. According to Feeney, finding the necessary data to accurately assess the situation is one of the response's most challenging issues. "Swaziland lacks the technical capacity, but this is a crucial time and there are plans to conduct a rapid assessment in collaboration with the government and NGOs." The assessment is expected by the end of February.