Urban food insecurity rising - new assessment

Nearly 2.5 million urban Zimbabweans are food insecure according to a recent urban food security assessment, an increase of 1.4 million people above an estimate made in April 2003. The report by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC) after their first nationwide urban survey, revealed that about 72 percent of the urban population were below the poverty line, a figure that had nearly doubled since 1995. The assessment was conducted in September and October 2003, in collaboration with the Southern Africa Development Community. It found that households headed by the elderly or only one income contributor, usually living in high-density suburbs, were most likely to be poor. "More than half of the households headed by orphans, widows/females, the elderly and the unemployed were found to be food insecure - as well as nearly one-third (31 percent) of ex-farm worker households who relocated to urban areas after being displaced from the former commercial farms during the government's "fast track" resettlement scheme," the ZIMVAC assessment said. Runaway inflation was seen as the main reason for deteriorating living conditions in urban areas. In September last year, the annual rate reached 456 percent and has since climbed to 623 percent. Soaring inflation has had a particularly debilitating effect on urban wage earners because increments lagged far behind the cost of living. While prices rocketed, industrial minimum wages remained unchanged at Zim $47,000 per month, enough to cover only around 5 percent of monthly expenditure. High unemployment levels also undermined the ability of households to buy the available food, the assessment showed. Other factors affecting urban households were increasing school fees and utility charges. Given an estimated maize and small grain production of 1.0 to 1.3 million metric tonnes, Zimbabwe is expected to have a cereal gap of between 500,000 mt and 800,000 mt. But despite the significant deficit, few urban households thought the ongoing drought and food shortages were significant problems. Urban families usually purchased most of their maize from the more expensive parallel markets, rather than the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) where prices are lower but supplies rationed. To cope with the rising cost of maize, almost 50 percent of households interviewed had borrowed money to buy food, "substituting less preferred foods for maize, or reducing the number of daily meals", the report said. "Nearly one-third of all households (nearly all of them poor or very poor) cut back their expenditures on health, education, transportation, and water and electricity in favour of food," the ZIMVAC found. In its latest report, the Famine Early Warning System (FEWSNET) highlighted that ensuring adequate food supplies to urban areas presented a considerable challenge, because the majority of rural farmers would be reticent to sell their stocks, given their recent memories of three consecutive poor seasons. Thus, the level of grain deliveries to the GMB was likely to be low, FEWSNET said. Following the VAC assessment, Zimbabwe's government was called upon to make "fundamental macroeconomic reforms" to lessen the economic impact on urban households. ZIMVAC said food aid programmes and safety nets targeting the poor and very poor where they lived were also needed, particularly in neglected urban areas. The number of people going hungry in Zimbabwe has outstripped earlier projections, with 7.5 million of the country's estimated 11.65 million population expected to require food aid in the next few months.