Widespread poverty exacerbates food crisis

The declining capacity of agriculture to provide adequate food for Lesotho's 2.2 million people lay at the heart of the country's food crisis, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) said in a recent report. The British-based think-tank noted that while in several southern African countries drought was seen as a trigger for the current food crisis, Lesotho had experienced completely different weather conditions. According to the government's Declaration of the State of Famine in April 2002, excessive rains and hailstorms were the main reasons for the crisis. The report also noted that the landlocked country did not produce a surplus of cereals and was dependent on maize imports from neighbouring South Africa. While cereal production had increased in recent years, the rate of increase has been outstripped by population, ODI said. "Though dependence on agriculture is high, agriculture is not an adequate and reliable source of income. For instance, in the most recent agricultural census, 46 percent of households reported subsistence farming as their main source of income," the report said. Moreover, agriculture and livestock farming activities accounted for nearly 60 percent of household income. But more than 95 percent of these households could not adequately produce their own food requirements. Even for those who had adequate land, home grown food often provided for less than five months of the year, the report pointed out. The privatisation of many agricultural support services had also significantly increased the prices of services, placing them beyond the reach of many rural households. NGOs have argued that the main cause of the crisis in Lesotho is HIV/AIDS. UNAIDS estimated in 2002 that around 31 percent of the adult population (15-49 years) of Lesotho was currently living with HIV. Recent studies have shown that HIV/AIDS reduces the labour potential of rural households because those responsible for tending farms are either sick, looking after the sick or looking after orphans. "It is important to note, though, that it is not just agricultural labour that is affected by HIV/AIDS. Workers in other sectors are retrenched when they become ill, and many of these workers are returning to rural areas in Lesotho," the report said. While the impact of HIV/AIDS and a decline in agricultural production were seen as contributors to the current food shortages, the underlying reason for the crisis was widespread poverty. There were a growing number of landless households in rural areas - rising from 12.7 percent of rural households in 1970 to 36.6 percent in 1994. The purchasing power of many rural and urban households in Lesotho fell sharply during the 1990s as migrant labourers were retrenched from South African mines. Rural households that had remittances as their main source of income became increasingly dependent on agriculture on marginal land. The study found that although industry in the capital, Maseru, had supported urban households, the employment opportunities had done little to support rural households containing retrenched miners "since most jobs in Maseru's industries are [held by] women, and pay so little that remittances are rarely sent back to rural areas". According to the Bureau of Statistics, the inflation rate between December 2001 and December 2002 was 11.2 percent. In particular, the price of maize meal rose from an average of M20.00 (about US $2) for 12.5 kg in December 2001 to M40.00 (about US $4) in December 2002. "Thus, low purchasing power, high levels of unemployment (30 percent) and the high level of poverty (50 percent) aggravate the food access problem," the report said. It also highlighted that the removal of government subsidies to basic foodstuffs and services had further weakened rural household food security.