Plenty of food for some

The World Food Programme (WFP) has purchased 100,000 mt of food from Zambia, following the country's remarkable turnaround in food production last year. However, despite production outstripping estimated domestic consumption requirements, some 430,000 people still required food aid. A new study has highlighted the need for a wider ranging analysis of factors, such as income levels, in determining domestic consumption requirements in future. WFP said it had spent more than US $18 million on food commodities in Zambia, including maize grain and fortified blended foods such as corn-soya blend, since January 2003. "Buying food locally is an effective way for WFP to boost the domestic economy, while also reducing our own transport costs and delivery time," WFP Country Director in Zambia Richard Ragan said in a statement. "We have been buying from everyone – farmers, millers and the government – in the hope that this will assist local markets and promote food production, which will ultimately contribute to the longer-term development of Zambia's agriculture," he added. WFP said its "large purchases were made possible by a much-improved harvest in 2003 – following severe food shortages in 2002 - which left more than 2 million Zambians in need of emergency food aid". More than 85 percent of the food purchased so far has been maize destined for WFP food aid programmes in food insecure parts of Zambia and Zimbabwe. "Smaller quantities of fortified blended foods have been bought and transported to other recipient countries, including Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo," WFP noted. "For the first time in Zambia's history, the country is exporting food to neighbouring Zimbabwe, rather than importing food from it," Ragan noted. Zambia produced 1.2 million mt of maize in the past harvest season, double that produced at the height of the food crisis, and outstripping the estimated domestic maize consumption requirement of 981,298 mt for 2003/04. The WFP cautioned that despite the country's "dramatic increase in local food production", the agency was still assisting "close to 430,000 people in chronically food insecure districts throughout Zambia". "These are vulnerable people at the bottom rung of society, who lost all their assets during the previous emergency and who have been affected by the devastating HIV/AIDS epidemic," said Ragan. A recent review of the methodology used to compile Zambia's National Food Balance Sheet recommended that subsequent food supply and demand analyses should incorporate information on the livelihoods and health conditions in different sectors of the population. The review argued that this, along with a survey of effective consumer demand for maize from millers, would allow for more accurate human consumption estimates - thus lessening the chances of gaps in information available to decision-makers in terms of food security. However, the lack of information regarding the output of commercial millers and rural mills was a stumbling block in determining effective demand, the review commented. "Livelihood-based food security analysis must be integral to the development of future National Food Balance Sheets," said the review. Aid agencies have pointed out that access to maize available on markets was restricted for those living below the poverty datum line.