Crippling drought continues

Ongoing drought will have a "dramatic impact" on the humanitarian situation in Lesotho and the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that between 600,000 and 700,000 people could be in need of food aid in the coming months. WFP Country Director Techeste Zergaber told IRIN on Monday that maize prices were likely to "hit the ceiling", and winter wheat and vegetable harvests had largely failed as drought continued to plague the tiny mountain kingdom. Lesotho has a population of just over 2 million people and relies heavily on imports from neighbouring South Africa, which completely surrounds the country. In its latest situation report WFP said the Lesotho Meteorological Services had warned that "the country is facing a severe drought". While there had been "light rains" during October, high temperatures and strong winds were responsible for unfavourable soil conditions due to a lack of moisture. "The drought has resulted in a failure in winter cropping and has delayed the start of agricultural activities in the mountain regions, as well as shortening summer agricultural activities in the lowlands. The situation is now critical and impacting a wide range of social and economic areas," WFP said. Outbreaks of disease caused by the consumption of stagnant water, "is of heightened concern" the organisation noted. Over the past two years Lesotho had experienced a progressive slide into famine and poverty of unprecedented proportions due to unusual weather patterns and the underlying negative impact of HIV/AIDS, said the latest UN Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Support Office (RIACSO) crisis update. "Half of the population lives below the poverty line, with 54 percent of the rural-based households being poor and 29 percent ultra-poor. It is these marginalized segments of the population that are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, unemployment, rural-to-urban migration, school drop-outs, and are subjected to risky behaviours such as prostitution," RIACSO noted. Life expectancy had also dropped from over 60 years in 1997 to about 40 years in 2002, mostly due to HIV/AIDS. "With the situation as it is now, whatever conservative estimates [of assistance] that were made in May, need to be revised. We should go back to last year's projections [of numbers in need of food aid] and that was in the range of 600,000 or 700,000 people," Zergaber said. He added that while the number of people in need might look exaggerated, given that the total population was 2.1 million, this was due to "the impact of HIV/AIDS and unemployment". "So really, if the numbers look exaggerated, the situation is that it is serious," Zergaber said. "We are already in October ... we should already have some rain now to start planting the summer crops, but the ground is too hard because there's not enough moisture [in the soil] to plant. If this condition persists another two weeks, the consequence will be [dire]. Even if they plant in another two weeks, the plants will be caught by March/April frosts, so they will not grow healthy," he added. Another two weeks of drought would see the price of maize climb higher, making it even more difficult for poor urban dwellers to access this staple food.