Food security is "fragile" says WFP

Food security for the poorest stratum of Tajikistan’s 6.5 million population - about 300,000 of them - remains fragile, despite a good harvest this year. The country was the poorest of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, and remains so to this day. "In addition to being a low-income, food-deficit country, Tajikistan cannot feed itself," Ardag Meghdessian, the country director for the World Food Programme (WFP), told IRIN in the capital, Dushanbe, noting that the country produced only half of what it needed. "For the foreseeable future, Tajikistan will be needing all the assistance it can get, including food assistance," he said, describing the country’s food security situation as "fragile". Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Tajikistan's subsequent independence in 1991, in addition to the decline in industrial production and standard of living, agricultural production dropped by half. According to the WFP official, his concern was exemplified by significant price increases of basic food items over the past year. Most worrying of all was the price of bread, said to have increased by more than 50 percent, despite this year's harvest of nearly 800,000 mt of wheat – a major jump from the catastrophic drought years of 2000 and 2001. While there are no accurate statistics, cereal needs - bearing in mind that the nation's staple food is bread - amounted to about 1.2 million mt, requiring the country to import between 400,000 mt and 450,000 mt from neighbouring Russia and Kazakhstan. "Given the harvest this year and the increase in prices, this seriously proves our point that Tajikistan is a food-deficit country," Meghdessian explained, adding that he would be particularly concerned if any type of export ban were to be imposed by Tajikistan’s two main suppliers. "As the harvest was not so good last year in Russia, we understand there are export restrictions, while in Kazakhstan the situation remains unclear. Definitely, prices of grains and cereals have gone up significantly in Kazakhstan, as we [WFP] buy a great deal of our programme needs there." He warned that in the event of an export ban, the implications would be serious, adding that WFP hoped to have a better picture of the situation by the end of December. "We hope Kazakhstan will continue exporting," he said. Using an extensive data bank that it established during the drought period two years earlier, the UN food agency is working to assist the poorest, most vulnerable 50,000 families, primarily in Tajikistan’s more remote rural areas. "It’s a one-time distribution, comprised of wheat flour, pulses, and oil," the WFP official said, noting that these people lived in their own homes and the assistance had been geared to supplement their supplies for the duration of the winter. That assistance was in addition to WFP’s ongoing nationwide efforts, including a school feeding programme, food-for-work programmes to rehabilitate rural assets, as well as in the health and nutrition sectors. According to the World Bank, 83 percent of the Tajik population lives below the national poverty line, with 17 percent being extremely poor. "Five percent are completely destitute. We are trying to reach this 5 percent to ensure that they have enough food to survive the winter," Meghdessian said. A WFP Situation Analysis found that of Tajikistan's 58 districts, seven fell into the "highest food-insecurity" category, 13 were affected by "high" food insecurity, 14 as "middle", 20 as "low", and four as "lowest".