Agricultural recovery needed to alleviate suffering

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on Wednesday stressed the need to urgently get agricultural recovery underway in Southern Africa in a message to mark World Food Day. "A chronic lack of food in Lesotho, Malawi, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe is having a long-lasting impact on the social fabric of the region, with many families being forced to make hard choices about how best to survive the lean months between now and the harvest expected next March," IFRC said. With 14.4 million people facing hunger in the region, agricultural recovery was "critical to the ultimate success of the overall relief effort" and it was "vital that the Red Cross and other actors go all out to ensure timely distribution of seeds and tools to have a good harvest by March next year", the statement quoted IFRC food security specialist Hisham Khogali as saying. "What we are seeing through household surveys is that people are making hard choices. In [the] worst cases, families are going entire days without eating anything substantial. Often they are being forced to take children out of school because they can no longer afford the school fees," Khogali said. The food crisis has been complicated by the fact that HIV infection rates in the region average 25 percent. Solveig Olafsdottir, IFRC spokeswoman in Harare, told IRIN that distribution of agricultural inputs would begin soon in three countries. "We're just hoping the rains will be good. We are starting with the provision of seeds in Lesotho, Malawi and in Zimbabwe probably next week. [Although] not a big part of the federation's appeal of 22 July, agricultural packages are quite an important component [of IFRC relief efforts]. We are hoping [that we] manage to distribute early and quickly enough," said Olafsdottir. It was important to get agricultural inputs in place early so that the March/April 2003 harvest "will alleviate, at least partly, the suffering of those that are at risk", she added.