Food security outlook good, says WFP

Tanzania's food prospects for this year appear to be favourable, despite earlier concerns that increased maize exports to neighbouring countries to the south would trigger a severe food shortage crisis, humanitarian sources said.

Selma Kalousek of the World Food Programme told IRIN on Monday that the food security outlook for Tanzania for 2002/03 was "better than it has been in the past two to three years".

A combination of a series of good harvests and stocks held by farmers and traders, as well as those in the government's Strategic Grain Reserve, along with adequate supplies of water and forage, had significantly improved the country's food security outlook, USAID's Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) said in its latest report.

However, it warned that isolated regions in northern Tanzania could be susceptible to a food shortage because of the unfavourable performance of the short and the long rains season in the 2001/02 production year.

"The extent of vulnerability to food insecurity in these and other places will be determined after the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Food Security Information Team and other partners complete a nationwide crop and food supply assessment in July," Kalousek said.

Earlier in April, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said a strong demand from Zambia and Malawi, in addition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as a result of adverse weather and/or insecurity, had triggered massive exports of food. [See also IRIN News report]