QUEBEC CITY – Drought and food shortages are stalking southern Africa again this year, forcing regional governments to reassess how they should fight it.
Food reserves are being depleted, food aid and commercial imports are rising and water reserves are dropping dangerously, African agriculture ministers told a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization conference here.
“Dry and drought seasons have become the pattern, rather than the exception, in recent years,” Zimbabwean agriculture minister Denis Norman told the FAO conference.
In a later interview, he worried that a greater threat even than declining food stocks is falling water reserves.
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“You can always import food,” he said. “Without water, much more than agriculture is affected. What would we do?”
An official of the United Nations World Food Program echoed the worry.
“It is not too bad this year. We can cope,” said Judit Katona-Apte, of the UN department of humanitarian affairs in New York.
“But we are all holding our breath and waiting for the next harvest. Either things will be OK with rain or they will be very, very bad. That would be a crisis.”
The 1995 drought follows the devastating 1992-93 drought that left tens of millions in the region dependent on food aid. There were casualties.
This year, the FAO says 10 million in the region are at risk.
The World Food Program estimated the real risk is much lower and said coping with this year’s crisis has been easier.
Since 1992, South Africa has become a full-fledged partner in the region and the war in Mozambique has ended, reducing the refugee crisis there.
Still, millions of tonnes of commercial and food aid must be moved into the region.
“The flow is just much easier to organize and co-ordinate because of South Africa and the fact that there are more ports that we can use this time,” said World Food Program official Douglas Coutts.
While regional officials and climatologists debate whether recurring dry years are now normal, Norman said governments are considering the best defence policies.
Promote water conservation
They are promoting the need for more research into drought-resistant crops, as well as water-conservation measures.
Norman said one of the policies under consideration is a proposal to have a regional food storage scheme in place that would involve reserves of food in each country, controlled by the national government.
“If we could look at it as a region, I think we could organize something like regional food security,” he said.
UN officials in the past have voiced skepticism about regional food banks, insisting that they must be operated nationally.
