Two million people face food shortage, UN agency says

Two million Burundians would need emergency food aid this year, 40 percent more than in 2004, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported on Wednesday. In a statement, the agency said a crop and food supply assessment report, jointly produced by WFP, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Burundian government, concluded that the country would face a food deficit of 310,000 mt in 2005, compared with 259,000 mt in 2004, "primarily because of unfavourable weather conditions since 2003, affecting maize and bean yields". "The food shortage was aggravated by the low production of traditional roots and tuberous crops such as yam, manioc (due to disease) and, to some extent, sweet potatoes," WFP said. To overcome the food crisis and tackle the specific needs of the most affected people, WFP said it would, together with FAO and other agencies, distribute 140,000 mt of food, 7.38 mt of seeds and 150,000 hoes to 369,000 families - the equivalent of two million people. The prices of staple foods underwent a 100 percent increase from August 2004, WFP said, and become unaffordable for poor and vulnerable families. "The food crisis is having a major impact on the nutritional situation," WFP said. "In January, supplementary feeding centres registered the highest number of admissions in three years." Food shortages are particularly acute in the north, northeast and central provinces - areas traditionally regarded as Burundi's food basket, the agency reported. In these provinces, it added, families had resorted to selling their livestock and other assets, including the roofs of their homes, as well as migrating in search of casual labour or seeking alternative sources of food. "This crisis comes just when Burundi is making some clear progress towards peace and stability," Zlatan Milisic, WFP country director for Burundi, was quoted as saying. "After so many years of war, living conditions for most Burundians are very harsh and this drought is creating additional pressure on an already deeply impoverished people." The food emergency has been worsening ever since the war broke out in 1993, WFP reported. The economy has been seriously debilitated, it added, with high inflation and devaluation of the national currency. It added that roads and other key infrastructure had been damaged or destroyed, insecurity prevented the movement of people and farming had also been limited by insecurity. According to WFP's food security survey in September 2004, 16 percent of Burundi's total population of 7.6 million people are "chronically short" of food, while 68 percent "live on the brink" of chronic food shortages. "To mitigate the impact of the gradual disappearance of cassava, the main inter-season crop, in certain provinces, FAO has embarked on a B-carotene-rich sweet potato cutting and healthy cassava material rapid propagation programme for 120,000 households," Mustafa S. Cassama, the FAO representative in Burundi, was quoted as saying. In January, Burundian President Domitien Ndayizeye issued a decree calling the situation in the northern provinces of Kirundo and Muyinga "a famine". However, humanitarian actors described the situation then as a serious food shortage. Also in January, an international coalition of churches, known as Action by Churches Together (ACT), appealed for US $25,000 to help Kirundo residents faced with severe food shortages. ACT said that as Burundi's breadbasket, Kirundo had suffered from drought for the last six years, with the most severely affected communes - where all the crops had dried out - being Busoni, Bugabira, Ntega and Kirundo. "People and livestock have died due to the unavailability of water and food," ACT said, "and some children are being fed through a syringe because they are not able to swallow."