Maravi

Amidst bumper harvests, hunger is still on

Amidst bumper harvests, hunger is still on
By Editor
Wednesday October 17, 2007 [04:00]

It is ironical that while we have been hearing government leaders pronounce that we have recorded a bumper harvest to the point of donating some of our yields to other countries, many people in this country continue to go hungry every day. While government leaders on one hand are making political statements about how good the farming season has been this year, traditional leaders, on the other, are busy calling on the central government to lend a helping hand and save their subjects from the jaws of hunger.

For instance, this year maize production is expected to be about 1.3 million metric tonnes and experts argue that this is not a small achievement for the country in terms of food production.

And since experts tell us that our national consumption is around 1.2 million metric tonnes, it means that we have about 100,000 metric tones of surplus maize. When the carryover stock from the previous season is added, we are talking of an even higher figure of surplus maize.

True as that may be, there are still many calls from nearly all parts of this country for relief food. Early this month, Chama North member of parliament Todd Chilembo was sending a distress call to the central government, asking it to send food to the area in order to avert hunger.

This is what he had to say: "I am just from the constituency and many families I visited were complaining of hunger. Some were telling me that they have started eating boiled mangoes while others are eating winter maize that is not even ready to be consumed...I was embarrassed when I was in the midst of men, women and children who were hungry but I had eaten."

Chilembo was making this appeal essentially because the 3,580 by 50 kilogram bags of maize and the 1,600 by 25 kilogram bags of mealie-meal that were initially sent to the area were not enough.

In mid September this year, Kalabo district commissioner Mwiya Wanyambe told the nation that over 127,000 people were faced with a serious threat of hunger in the area and that the problem in the area was perennial.

In early September this year, Maamba ward councilor in Sinazongwe district expressed concern over the increase in the number of parents in the area that were sending children to Maamba to sell charcoal due to the hunger situation in the area.

So, these are the realities and this is what makes this whole thing about bumper harvests a total paradox because amidst bumper harvests, hunger is still raging and it is exposing those affected to unacceptable conditions such as malnutrition.

If indeed we have the excess yields that we claim to have recorded to the extent that we can be a Father Christmas to other countries, is it not easy to redistribute a good amount of our bumper harvest according to the needy of our country?

If we are truly food secure as a nation, it is not possible that some parts of this country could be going basically without food. Food security means that people must have sufficient, safe and nutritious food at all times in order to meet their dietary needs which ultimately leads to an active and healthy lifestyle for them.

Food security means that food should be readily available to people and there should be generally assured ability for people to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways, meaning that they should not always wait for emergency food supplies in order to feed, nor resorting to scavenging.

Basically, we can only talk about food security as a nation when we reach a point where people do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.

However, as things stand today, we cannot claim to have attained food security in Zambia because a good number of our people still have to rely on the goodwill of the government or other relief agencies for relief food.

Much as we would want to highlight the lack of food security in Zambia, because it is important that we do so anyway, we are also aware that the problem of hunger is not peculiar to Zambia; it is a worldwide phenomenon.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the number of people without enough food to eat on a regular basis remains stubbornly high, at over 800 million, and is not falling significantly.

The FAO estimates that over 60 per cent of the world's undernourished people live in Asia, and a quarter in Africa. But FAO emphasises that the proportion of people who are hungry, however, is greater in Africa (at 33 per cent) than Asia (at 16 per cent).

The FAO figures indicate that there are 22 countries, 16 of which are in Africa, in which the undernourishment prevalence rate is over 35 per cent. These statistics are plainly stark and unsettling but they are a true reflection of the state of the food or hunger situation in the world.

It is clear that there is little time to waste. We have to start tackling the hunger situation in our country because if we have excess or surplus crop yields, then it means that there is a problem somewhere in terms of how the surplus is distributed across the areas of perennial crop deficits.

We have been experiencing perpetual food shortages and distribution problems for many years and we should have by now devised or developed capacity in terms of food management and distribution in order to ensure that the population is not exposed to unnecessary hunger situations.

Let us not forget that the effects or ramifications of chronic or widespread hunger amongst our people is devastating, including malnutrition and other health problems resulting from chronic hunger.

Yes, we do understand that as a country we have once in a while faced droughts or floods that have affected crop yields.

However, we also believe that government has a significant role to play in terms of mitigating the effects of such. If the government cannot plan for long-term solutions such as irrigation at a large scale, then it should always be ready to deal with the shocks that come with droughts and floods with the kind of precision which will protect the population from any form of hunger or famine.

This means that the government must work on improving the agriculture sector using a holistic approach which will ensure that key issues such as distribution are put in place.

We are saying this because sometimes we feel that not enough is put in place to protect people from hunger, especially now when we have been talking about bumper harvests in the last few years.

As we have already said, we do not have a lot of time to waste over this matter. We have to address the hunger situation wherever it may occur and it has to be from both a pragmatic and holistic perspective.

Labels: CHIEFS, EDITORIAL, MAIZE, POVERTY

posted by MrK @ 3:29 AM