Drought increases food insecurity

The dry spell afflicting Southern Africa will have long term consequences for food security in the region. The Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) said in its latest update that the food security outlook for Southern Africa remains poor. Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and particularly Zimbabwe, have all experienced well-below normal rainfall this season. FEWS NET's Country Food Security Updates for Southern Africa, covering the period from mid-January to mid-February, is due to be released on their website www.fews.net shortly. FEWS NET warned that for Malawi, while the projected maize production level may be enough to feed the country, the crop is threatened by premature harvesting as a result of current food insecurity. It said only 62,000 mt out of the 150,000 mt of maize imported from South Africa had arrived in Malawi by the second week of February. "The slow inflow has been attributed to a number of factors, including congestion in the transport routes." The Southern Africa Development Community's Regional Early Warning Unit (REWU) highlighted the slow delivery of food aid due to logistical and other constraints in its quarterly regional update released on Tuesday. The REWU bulletin said: "Low import delivery, in which only 36 percent of planned regional imports have been received, has exacerbated the already dwindling food supplies in landlocked countries of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe, and has failed to bring relief to households going through one of the most severe lean seasons in recent years. Urgent food aid supply is vital in order to avoid mass starvation in these countries." FEWS NET said: "The food security situation at the moment is approaching critical. Reports from the field indicate that in some of the [government's maize marketing body] ADMARC markets, maize only lasts one to two days after delivery due to high demand for the commodity." Added to this, the continued depreciation of the Malawi Kwacha against the US dollar (it dropped from about MK68 to US$1 in January to MK73 to US$1 in February) would "be detrimental to food security as it may lead to increases in prices of commodities, especially those that are imported", FEWS NET warned. Mozambique has been experiencing rainfall below normal so far this year. "This has adversely affected maize yields in southern Mozambique and rice, sorghum and maize in central Mozambique." A team comprising experts from the National Institute for Natural Disaster Management, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Research Institute of Crops in Semi-Arid Tropics, visited Gaza province in February to analyse the effects of drought on production, food availability, and modalities of food aid assistance for populations in need. It has been recommended that an emergency response plan be implemented, which would include the distribution of cassava and sweet potatoes and the supply of maize and bean seeds to those in need. In Zambia, meanwhile, many households were unable to afford maize because of the "exceptionally high prices". WFP's food aid distribution was being hampered by the "slow rate of relief food being brought into the country". FEWS NET said out of the estimated 42,000 mt requirement, only 12,000 mt of food aid had been purchased in South Africa for distribution to Zambia. It said also that the "response from donors has been slow". In Zimbabwe "the maize harvest prospects in the 2001/02 season are expected to be between 750,000 to 1.3 million mt, or between 44 and 78 percent of the 1990s' average, respectively". Zimbabwe needed to start planning the importation of a substantial amount of maize (as much as 500,000 to 1.2 million mt) to meet the potential food deficit in the 2002/03 marketing season. FEWS NET said: "This is in addition to the expected 200,000 mt of maize imports currently planned to meet immediate consumption requirements before the end of the 2001/02 marketing season which ends in March 2002. "Food security at the household level has reached a critical state ... long queues are common at the retail outlets and the Grain Marketing Board depots as consumers in both urban and rural areas scramble for maize grain or maize meal, which have become scarce despite government's effort to import maize from South Africa." The cost of the expenditure basket has substantially risen as a result of the increase in the price of certain basic, but scarce, commodities, FEWS NET said. The price of cooking oil had increased 355 percent since May 2001 and the price of maize grain had increased by 220 percent.