FAO gives seeds, hoes to 200,000 households in the east

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has begun its distribution of seeds and farming tools to 200,000 vulnerable households (average of five or six people per household) in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the agency reported on Thursday. "By distributing agricultural inputs to families with severely malnourished children, households can resume normal agricultural activities and provide more food for their children," Alexis Bonte, the FAO coordinator in eastern Congo, was quoted as saying. Also targeted in the distributions, due to end in December, are displaced groups and households with limited food resources in isolated urban centres in the east, the FAO office in Nairobi, Kenya, said. It said the families were each receiving a hoe and seeds, "some of which will be quick growing vegetable crops seeds". "Selected households are also receiving guinea pigs, which are traditionally bred and eaten in the region to help provide additional protein for young children’s diet," FAO reported. It said that it was also distributing agricultural inputs to some 122,000 families, whose malnourished children were receiving treatment in therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres. Malnutrition rates throughout the east vary from between 5 percent and 20 percent, FAO said. It added that 122 nutritional centres in North and South Kivu, northern Katanga and Maniema provinces as well as Ituri District were targeted for the distribution. "Families with well-fed, healthy children do not have to spend their meagre funds paying for medical care for their dependants," Bonte was quoted as saying. "This allows households to use what little funds they have towards improving their long-term food security prospects, through purchasing additional seeds to plant for example." FAO said it was also distributing quick-growing amaranthine seeds to 45,670 recently displaced families in towns and centres such as Beni, "where many of the displaced are living in makeshift camps". It said that 7,800 households in the region, which had been surviving mainly by cultivating marginal land on the peripheries of towns and villages, were also being assisted with FAO distributions. Bonte said that one of the beneficiaries, Eringeti Mandro, had been displaced in Ituri province for many months. "In February he received a hoe and some market garden seeds, and by June he was producing enough vegetables for his family and also to provide a surplus," Bonte said. "He sold the surplus vegetables to buy a chicken, which he is still rearing. He told me that he hopes to buy many more chickens in the future." FAO said that due to the ongoing insecurity in eastern Congo, towns and urban centres such as Bunia, Kalima, Punia, Kongolo and Kasongo remained cut off from rural areas and had become inaccessible to all but humanitarian aid. A lack of mobility had meant that households did not have either access to markets to buy food, or were unable to return to rural areas to cultivate their fields, FAO reported. It said it was distributing 33,100 hoes to populations in isolated urban centres, allowing them to continue with urban, market gardening initiatives. Funding for the latest FAO intervention in eastern Congo came from the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, United States and the European Commission Humanitarian Aid Office, the agency reported. FAO said the distributions were being undertaken in collaboration with 15 NGOs operating in the east, among them CARE, Caritas, Concern, COOPI, Save the Children Fund and World Vision International.