Food insecurity hits remote villages in west

Angyara Bhandari and her two young children had to walk for days from her remote village in Bajura district, 800km northwest of the capital, Kathmandu, in search of food. The nearest place with a market was Sanphe Bagar in Accham district, more than 200km from her village.

Bhandari’s village is in the far west of Nepal’s northern hills, one of the world's poorest regions, which is facing a severe food deficit.

Low agricultural production and lack of effective food storage systems and market access have hit thousands of poor villagers such as Bhandari. The situation deteriorated in 2006 when there was a severe drought followed by heavy snowfall in early 2007 and most of the crops failed.

"Our hardship is very common and this is why we have to leave our homes and lands to find food and income in other villages," said Bhandari, who now lives in a hut built with twigs and branches and covered by a plastic sheet. About 150 families have been living on empty land near Sanphe Bagar for the past two months.

Her malnourished children often get sick and suffer from stomach-ache, diarrhoea and pneumonia. "I'm lucky that my children are still alive," she added, holding her 18-month-old daughter while relating how young children die almost every month in her district.

"We live like nomads. Once we run out of food in this place, we move to another district to the south," said 15-year-old Laxmi Thapa, another villager from Bajura, who left school to travel with her family in search of food.

Bajura remains the worst-affected district, with more than 35,000 people facing deteriorating food security, according to the crop and food security assessment by the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOFC), conducted with support from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FA0).

The MOFC estimated in November 2006 that the country would experience a shortage of almost 190,000 metric tonnes of food in 2007, mostly in Bajura and 33 other districts.

Due to the worsening food security situation, WFP had to launch the first emergency food operation in 2006 after working in the country for nearly 40 years. Since then, the food crisis has escalated.

The emergency operation, in addition to food-for-work activities, helped to secure rice stocks for between two and four months. The operation was stalled in January due to a shortage of resources but is being relaunched in May.

But for WFP, the operation is already too expensive due to the logistical arrangements of covering the most difficult terrain in Nepal. A three-month operation to July would cost WFP nearly US$6.5 million.

"The logistics are tough and the resources are always a problem," Richard Ragan, WFP's country representative in Nepal, told IRIN. Ragan added that adverse climate conditions, political unrest and constant strikes had exacerbated food insecurity.

More than 60 percent of Nepal’s terrain is mountainous and the hill region of Bajura district abuts the mountains and ranges from 1,000 to 4,000 metres in altitude.

Besides emergency food supplies, WFP is also involved with the government and other aid agencies, such as the German and Swiss development agencies, in food-for-work projects.

"There is a dire need for sustainable food security because feeding the populations with only rice is really not a long-term solution," said Narendra KC, director of support activities for poor producers of Nepal (SAPPROS), a local agency that supports the farming communities with new agricultural technologies in the most remote villages.

SAPPROS, which works closely with WFP, stressed that the aid agencies should not look for short-term solutions but invest the same huge resources in developing infrastructure, irrigation facilities and new agricultural technologies - all with the potential to increase local production.

"We have tried our technologies in several villages and they are already working well," added KC.

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