Food shortages predicted

Some 180,000 people in Mozambique and Swaziland face food shortages following heavy flooding which destroyed much of their crops last year, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has warned. It said that grain supplies in the two countries - both perennial deficit food countries - could worsen over the next few months as a result of new flooding and reduced planting in the current season. “Although the (Mozambican) food security situation remains good at the national level, pockets of food insecure groups exist,” SADC’s Regional Early Warning Unit said in a bulletin released last week. “A total of 165,000 people in some 37 districts have been identified as food insecure and do not have enough food reserves to cover food needs until the next harvest.” Cyclone-induced floods up to March 2000 claimed some 700 Mozambican lives and cost the country an estimated US $600 million in infrastructure damage and lost production. The effects of the devastating floods would also see a drop in food production in the 2000/2001 season. “Area planted so far is deemed below average for this time of the year, mainly on account of lack of seeds and farm implements, especially in the areas affected by flooding last season during which infrastructure was destroyed and farm equipment lost,” the report said. Meanwhile, new flooding in parts of the country has caused more damage to infrastructure and displaced hundreds of people over the past few weeks. The early warning unit said the food security situation was expected to worsen next month. “Current assessments indicate an after trade maize deficit of 168,000 tonnes which will manifest in maize shortages from February 2001 unless current import plans are increased,” it noted. In neighbouring Swaziland, over 13,000 people have been faced with starvation since March 2000. However, the government says the international community has turned a deaf ear to its pleas for emergency food aid. “There is still an urgent need for emergency food aid amounting to about 23,000 mt of maize. So far no pledges have been made,” the ministry of agriculture and cooperatives said in a December food security bulletin released last week. The government first made an appeal for humanitarian food aid in mid-2000. The ministry said the country’s maize supplies fell short of its total requirement of 155,700 mt even after imports by the state-run National Maize Corporation and private millers. Meanwhile, heavy rains over the past few weeks destroyed some of the crop in the field and left hundreds of farmers in need of aid to replant. “The southern part of the country has been devastated by a heavy hailstorm which destroyed over 1,970 hectares of maize, beans, cotton and some groundnuts. More hectares of maize were damaged,” the government release said. A country of around one million people, Swaziland has been a food deficit country since independence from Britain in 1968. Analysts blame the country’s inability to feed itself on a poor crop marketing system, which is run by the state, and on poor storage facilities, which see up to 40 percent of the crop being destroyed after harvesting. The SADC bulletin said most countries in the sub-region had failed to meet their food import requirements over the past several months. “A generally slow import delivery rate has been indicated in most countries, with an overall regional rate indicated at only 33 percent since the beginning of the 2000/2001 marketing season,” it reported. However, the regional food deficit in the 2000/2001 season, estimated at 293,000 mt, was markedly lower than the previous year’s 2.19 million mt.