World Vision prepares for food crisis

With 500,000 Mozambicans in need of food aid this year, World Vision has set up a national "emergency response disaster management committee" aimed at strengthening the development agency's capacity to deal with emergency situations. "The team will be invaluable in planning and implementing World Vision's response and ongoing mitigation programmes," the agency's Relief and Emergency Officer Anthea Spinks said in a press statement on Wednesday. The 10-strong team is made up of staff specialising in areas spanning some of World Vision's main activities in Mozambique, from agriculture to human resources and health. National Director Martha Newsome said the potential dimension of the crisis indicated that World Vision's financial capacity in Mozambique could be stretched to the limit. "It is therefore important that we get additional support," she said. Approximately 515,000 people in poor households in 43 districts in southern and central districts of Mozambique are facing "severe food insecurity" due to drought and the exhaustion of their coping mechanisms over the past four years, a UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) assessment report released on Tuesday said. Some 355,000 people out of the proposed 515,000 beneficiaries require immediate food aid of 53,250 mt to March 2003. A second group of 160,000 people needing 16,800 mt are expected to be added in September 2002 with the exhaustion of their current harvest, the FAO/WFP report said. Although nationally Mozambique will enjoy a normal to good harvest, high internal transport costs make it uncompetitive to move maize from the north to the deficit south. Food security conditions across the country are "strongly influenced by weather" as subsistence agriculture provides more than 80 percent of basic food needs to more than 70 percent of the population, the joint report said. In the semi-arid southern and central regions, food security conditions are normally fragile. Households in these areas are unlikely to be able to replace lost production with other income and production until at least April 2003, the food agencies warned.