Food shortage looms

A severe food shortage is looming in various parts of Tanzania, including one of the leading cereal production areas in the central region of Iringa, which various media reports have attributed to a combination of factors, including drought, pests and increased cereal demand in neighbouring countries.

Tanzanian authorities said a combination of drought and pests in the northern, central and eastern regions of the country, had cut the 2001/2002 food output by four percent to 7.4 million tonnes compared with a national demand of 8.1 million tonnes, the Pan African news agency (PANA) reported on Friday.

PANA quoted Onasimbo Ntukha, Tanzania's National Food Security Director, as saying recent "food assessment studies" had shown that nearly 120,000 people in more than 10 districts would need food relief between now and the beginning of long rains in April, according to the agency.

A sharp rise in the wholesale prices of major foodstuffs such as maize has been reported in some parts of the country, driven mainly by competition over food exports to neighbouring countries including Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi.

For example, the price of a 100-kg bag of maize shot up from the national average of 2,500 Tanzanian shillings (Tsh) to as much as Tsh 18,000 between November and January, according to PANA. In Iringa, a bag of maize is now sold at around Tsh 20,000 compared with last year's price of only 3,000, the local Sunday Observer newspaper reported on Sunday.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has confirmed the food shortage, especially in parts of the northern and central regions which tend to be food insecure, but said the situation was not of a famine proportion as had been earlier feared, but that intervention was still necessary to prevent it from reaching that scale.

"There are clear signals of increasingly tightened food supplies reflected by the escalating cereal prices," WFP's Juvenal Kisanga told IRIN from Dar es Salaam, adding that this was abnormal at this time.

Nicole Menage, WFP's information officer in Dar es Salaam, told IRIN on Tuesday that the agency had carried out a "vulnerability assessment" in November 2001, and had prepared a response to anticipated food shortages. "We have extended last year's drought response until the end of April 2002, and we plan to use some 5,700 tonnes of stocks remaining to help the most food insecure and vulnerable make it through the lean season." A follow-up assessment was planned in the next two weeks, she added.

The government was currently receiving field situation reports for analysis before initiating appropriate measures, she said.

Iringa Regional Commissioner Maj-Gen (retd) James Luhanga had said the region, which suffered drought and consequent low production last season, needed 5,151 mt of grain, and 281.8 mt of beans and related crops for it to meet its basic food requirements, the Sunday Observer reported.

He said maize smuggling to "hunger-stricken neighbouring countries" like Malawi and Zambia had compounded the problem, but did not believe that this had caused the famine. "At least our farmers have managed to sell their maize, and are hence better placed to increase production in future," the paper quoted him as saying.

Luhanga said the regional authorities had written to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security requesting the release of a "substantial amount" of grain from the National Strategic Grain Reserve which could then be sold to families short of food, and urged the government to allow farmers in the maize-growing regions of Mbeya, Iringa and Ruvuma to export maize to neighbouring countries to prevent smuggling, which denied it revenue, according to the paper.

In December 2001, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported a stable overall food supply situation in the eastern, central and northern regions, but noted a sharp increase in food prices, as a result of growing demand for cereals in neighbouring Zambia, Malawi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which themselves "saw major food deficits due to either adverse weather or insecurity".

The FAO/Global Information and Early Warning System (FAO/GIEWS) Africa Report No 3, released in December 2001, predicted a cereal deficit for Tanzania during the 2001/2002 marketing year, which would require 690,000 mt of commercial imports and 150,000 mt of food aid to offset it. The report added that some 12 districts in the north and central regions of Tanzania were already facing varying degrees of food insecurity.

Tanzania, a low-income food-deficit country has a tropical wet-dry climate with two rainy seasons in the north (November-December and March-May) and one in the south (November-April). The country experiences surplus cereal production in the south and southwest, and perennial cereal deficits in the north and northwest, according to the FAO/GIEWS fact sheet.