Pigs to the rescue

How many households can one pig be stretched to sustain?

The Street Kids, Orphans and Widows Association (SKOWA), a poverty-related NGO in Kapiri Mposhi, an impoverished rural district in central Zambia, is determined to find out.

Moved to intervene by a general slide into poverty but crippled by a lack of material resources, this two-year-old organisation has resorted to an unorthodox coping mechanism - leasing out pregnant sows to the most desperate families in the community.

"We lend each needy family a sow until it delivers. They get to keep the offspring, and we take the pig for lending to the next needy family," SKOWA trustee Ruth Nawale told IRIN.

Such unconventional coping strategies are expected to become more widespread as a severe food crisis, which has haunted the country for several months now, worsens in the months ahead.

Prolonged drought and flooding in most parts of the country, coupled with poor agricultural inputs management, saw eight of Zambia's nine provinces recording deficits of maize, the staple cereal, last year.

According to UN food agencies, Zambia has a cereal deficit of 275,000 mt to be covered by the government and external assistance. Last month, President Levy Mwanawasa declared "a national disaster" and called for international food aid to help feed 2.3 million Zambians between now and April next year.

Earlier, the World Food Programme (WFP) launched an appeal for US $18 million for Zambia. However, while some donors have responded with varying levels of support, WFP representative Richard Ragan has described the response as "slow".

The Mwanawasa government has taken other measures to address what threatens to become a perennial food crisis.

Early this year, for example, Agriculture Minister Mundia Sikatana launched a programme under which the government would support a national programme to grow "winter maize" - a second, irrigation-fed crop that should be ready for harvesting around September. Virtually all maize produced in the past has been rain-fed and harvested around April.

Sikatana told IRIN: "We only want [food] interventions for this period, thereafter we'll take care of ourselves ... Never mind the drought, we have resources. That is why as minister of agriculture I refuse to accept the fact that Zambians can remain dependent on relief and begging."

The government has also reviewed some economic reforms effected in the 1990s it sees as having hindered agricultural activity. Among other things, it has reintroduced fertiliser subsidies for peasants, re-assumed an active role in crop marketing and slashed fuel duty and electricity tariffs for farmers.

"People have mismanaged this country," said Sikatana, who was appointed agricultural minister at the beginning of the year. "Fertiliser was unaccounted for, roads were not maintained. The previous administration had no regard for the fate of the people."

Last week, the government released 10 billion kwacha (about US $2.2 million) for relief food to the country's most vulnerable households through its long-standing Programme Against Malnutrition [PAM]. However, development campaigners say its efforts to avert widespread starvation fall far short of the requirements.

"The 10 billion kwacha given to PAM is far from adequate, considering that 80 percent of the population is desperately poor," PAM board chairman Bishop John Mambo said. "A similar allocation last year enabled us to reach only 120,000 families, instead of the targeted 200,000."

Development campaigners also point out that programmes to attain food security, while well-conceived, are generally directed at the long term and do not address the immediate crisis.

"What is needed, within a short space of time, is a full-fledged proactive stance by the government in addressing this problem. While the winter maize project might contribute towards meeting the national shortfall, the fact that some parts of the country will run out of food as early as July makes it imperative to also find some alternative ways of addressing the problem," said Muweme Muweme of the church-backed Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection [JCTR].

Muweme, who heads the economic and social development research project of the JCTR, pointed out that a lot of Zambians were still unable to afford food even when it was readily available.

"The only difference between their daily experience and the current situation is the intensity of the problem and the cause. Therefore, it is also important that the government goes beyond looking at the situation in its current form and look at those factors core to accessing food by households, especially poor households. For example, it is difficult to see how a situation of unemployment and generally low wages can enable access to adequate food," he said.

Then there are those who are too old or too vulnerable that even cheaper food or production subsidies cannot help.

"We need to create a system under which some people can be looked after by the community, in orphanages and old people's homes," said SKOWA chairperson, Theresa Mapulanga.