Cost of food aid soars as global need rises*

16 Oct 2007 13:20:52 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Peter Apps

LONDON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - A "perfect storm" of drought, conflict and
rising costs has increased the ranks of the chronically hungry by
millions of people, and forced aid workers to find and fund longer-term
solutions to the food crisis.

As the world marked World Food Day on Tuesday, the United Nations said
the number of chronically hungry people around the globe rises by an
average of 4 million each year.

At the same time global fuel prices have soared, pushing up road
transport costs and global maritime shipping rates.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) says the cost of cereals has risen
50 percent over the past five years, which experts say is due to the
world's growing population -- particularly in non-food producing urban
areas -- combined with bad harvests and an increased demand for cereal
products in previously rice-eating India and China.

Conflict in some of the world's poorest regions has created refugee
crises and experts warn climate change may promote more fighting over
resources, demolishing coping strategies and pushing already vulnerable
families over the edge.

"It is a perfect storm," said WFP Africa spokesman Peter Smerdon. "They
all feed into each other."

Worst affected is sub-Saharan Africa, home to 21 of the 36 states
worldwide requiring food assistance.

WFP says it is most concerned about Somalia where drought and conflict
have coincided to produce what some say is the country's worst
humanitarian crisis.

Violence has restricted handouts and fighting between the transitional
government, its Ethiopian allies and insurgents has forced thousands to
flee Mogadishu to makeshift camps.

The closure of the capital's main market -- a food and job lifeline
which has been the scene of repeated fighting and was recently burned --
has also hit supplies and buying power.

LONG TERM SAVINGS?

In southern Africa, food crises in Zimbabwe and the kingdoms of Lesotho
and Swaziland share two causes: drought, which has also hit regional
producer South Africa and driven up prices, and AIDS, which has killed
farmers and in turn cut output.

Zimbabwe's situation is exacerbated by the seizure of white commercial
farmland for landless blacks which has hit output, critics say, and
hyperinflation and economic collapse.

West and southern Africa are largely at peace, making access relatively
easy but in East and Central Africa's war zones, many of the neediest
are out of reach.

New fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has left WFP unable
to reach a third of 300,000 new displaced, while in Ethiopia's Ogaden
region government restrictions and a crackdown on rebels are seen
blocking aid and trade shipments.

"Populations in these areas are reportedly consuming wild foods and, in
the most food-insecure households, slaughtering livestock -- their main
source of income -- for consumption," said famine early warning service
FEWS NET.

"If trade restrictions continue, these negative coping strategies will
lead to destitution."

But while conflict continues to drive food shortages from Sri Lanka to
Colombia, hunger is more often caused by deepening poverty.

"If our planet produces enough food to feed its entire population, why
do 854 million people still go to sleep on an empty stomach?," the U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organisation Director-General, Jacques Diouf, said
in Rome.

The world should consider the right to food a universal right for all
human beings, without distinction or discrimination.

Increasingly, aid workers say it is time to move beyond handing out food
as crises bite. They say simply speaking, longer-term programmes could
save money.

Aid group CARE International says its programmes in West Africa's Niger,
aimed at reducing poverty and building sustainable agriculture, cost
only around $30 a person -- half the price of providing food at the peak
of a 2005 food crisis.

While some government donors are being won over to that idea, obtaining
funding for sustainable development lacks the draw of an urgent
emergency appeal.

"With an emergency response, it is very easy to say who you helped and
where," Africa food security expert for CARE International UK Vanessa
Rubin told Reuters.