More people may need assistance

Mozambique's food security crisis could worsen, should the important autumn crop fail in parts of the country that are already battling hunger. Earlier this year a joint Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) assessment found that about half a million Mozambicans needed food aid. A WFP consultant in Maputo told IRIN on Tuesday that this number could rise should the autumn crops fail. The FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission visited Mozambique from 21 April to 10 May this year to determine needs in the wake of a regional food crisis brought on by drought. About 515,000 people in poor households in 43 districts of the southern and central regions of Mozambique were identified as "facing severe food insecurity". This was about 15 percent of the total population of the two regions but was less than three percent of the country's total population. It was estimated that the needy would require 70,050 mt of food aid until April 2003. "About 355,000 of the proposed 515,000 beneficiaries require immediate food aid of 53,250 mt through March 2003, while a second group of 160,000 people requiring 16,800 mt should be added in September 2002 because their current-year harvest production will be exhausted at that time," the FAO/WFP report said. WFP consultant Peter Haag told IRIN that officials were "starting the next round of assessments as we speak" and that "there is a general belief that these numbers [of people needing aid] are going to go up". Of particular concern was the possibility that, as a result of the poor weather conditions, the autumn harvest could fail. "Mozambique has two harvests, spring and autumn, the autumn harvest is quite important for the south and that's why people are quite concerned that the situation could become worse, if the second crop fails the numbers [of those in need] will go up," Haag said. At present the WFP was supplying food to between 250,000 to 350,000 beneficiaries. This was being done in line with the governments policy to, wherever possible, conduct food-for-work programmes, he said. The current crop assessment would not only survey the crops in the food insecure southern and central parts of the country but also in the north, where pests have taken their toll on cassava crops, another staple food. "One thing that was not at all included in our budgets [of aid required], which is not related to droughts, is that a number of districts in Nampula in the north will have problems with their cassava [crops], because of pests. For the people it does not matter if they go without food because of drought or pests," Haag said. Mozambique had so far been lucky in the sense that "it was hardest hit where population density was not high". However, people would continue to be food insecure because "they are sticking to drought vulnerable crops ... people are still very much sticking to white maize". This was despite efforts by the government and FAO to get people to diversify their crops. WFP information officer, Inyene Uyoden, told IRIN that although the harvest in the north of the country had been better than the south, it was cheaper and logistically easier to import relief maize from South Africa. Said Uyoden: "The costs of bringing things from the north to the south are [greater] than getting it shipped from Durban straight up to Maputo. For some of the commercial farms [in Mozambique] the costs of bagging the maize and shipping it is fine, but not for the smaller farms ... you need a certain amount of maize for the economy of scale to kick-in. "We've been trying to get them [smaller farmers] to form cooperatives so we can get them to sell as a group." Apart from the economic stumbling blocks, transport infrastructure also made sourcing maize and other stocks from the north difficult. Mozambique's infrastructure was severely degraded during its long civil war. "The roads in the north are not good, getting crops from the fields to a main centre, such as Beira or Nampula, and from there on to the south is generally difficult," Uyoden said. It had been reported that, where possible, farmers in the north were exporting maize to neighbouring Malawi, which is struggling with its own food security crisis.