It gets worse each day for Zimbabweans struggling with shortages and escalating food prices, now denominated in US dollars.

"There is nothing you can buy in local currency, everyone now wants foreign currency and this is causing so much suffering, as people are failing to buy food because they do not have any foreign currency," said Thabani Msipa in the southern city of Bulawayo.

At the beginning of October the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) licensed hundreds of shops to sell goods in foreign currency, and unlicensed retailers followed suit.

Msipa gets a monthly remittance of R300 (US$30) from his two sons working in South Africa, but it is not enough. "The price of goods in the shops is too much, even in foreign currency. A 10kg bag of maize-meal is going for R100 (US$10) here in Zimbabwe; a similar bag costs about R40 (US$4) in South Africa."

Lindiwe Moyo, a primary school teacher, is even worse off: she has to feed a family of six on her meagre salary. "The only people who are accepting Zimbabwean dollars are vegetable vendors. We have been surviving for weeks on green vegetables from our garden, which we mix with soup from the tomatoes we buy from the local market."

She said simple basics like bread, maize-meal and cooking oil were all beyond her reach, and sometimes the family slept on empty stomachs. An average salary is Z$400,000, currently less than US$4 on the parallel market, but a loaf of bread costs Z$100,000 (US$1).

We have nothing left to eat

In theory, rural areas are better off. Although they face the same shortages as a result of a disastrous harvest and a staggering inflation rate of over 230 million percent, they do have access to wild foods - a traditional emergency larder in times of hardship.

Zimbabwe's food crisis was deepened by a three-month ban on NGOs imposed by the government in June, after accusing them of supporting the opposition. The ban was lifted at the end August, but the NGOs - central to relief work - are yet to resume full-scale operations.

"We have nothing left to eat and it is useless even checking with other villagers, as they also have nothing to eat, and we are just waiting for [the development agency] World Vision to resume food distribution," said Samuel Ndlovu, in the Nkayi district of southern Zimbabwe's Matabeleland North Province.

"Every day we eat the wild fruit that are available in the bush, but the fruits are not good to eat every day; and school children are no longer going to school but spend the whole day looking for the wild fruits."

When food does become available in the depots of the state-run Grain Marketing Board, a 50kg bag cost Z$1.4 million (US$14), far too expensive for most villagers, said local councillor Cain Ndlovu.

"As a result, you find that people from urban areas are the ones who buy the maize for resale in urban areas, where they sell the maize in foreign currency because it is also not available in urban areas," he explained.

"We should just have airlifting of food to affected areas, as is happening in the Darfur region [of Sudan] and other areas in the world, because very soon we will be recording fatalities," the councillor said.

The UN World Food Programme has warned that by the beginning of 2009, 5.1 million Zimbabweans - almost half the population - will be in need of food aid. The organisation has appealed for US$140 million to help meet those needs.

IRIN

Rural Zimbabweans have always turned to an emergency larder of wild foods to see them through hard times, but in this year of shortages and dizzying prices for all basic foodstuffs, the fruits and roots foraged from the bush are keeping many alive.

In the southern province of Matabeleland North, villagers are relying on a variety of wild fruits, tubers and okra-like vegetables, which become more abundant as the rainy season progresses.

"Everyday we eat the wild fruit that are available in the bush, but the fruits are not good to eat every day. And school children are no longer going to school but spend the whole day looking for the wild fruits," Samuel Ndlovu, from Dakamela village, told IRIN.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said in a recent statement: "A large number of farmers harvested little – if anything – this year, and have now exhausted their meagre stocks. Many hungry families are reportedly living on one meal a day, exchanging precious livestock for buckets of maize or eating wild foods such as baobab and amarula." About 28 percent of children under five are already chronically malnourished.

Esnath Nyoni, in the Lupane area of Matabeleland North, said her family had last eaten a decent meal in the previous week. They are now surviving on a bland porridge made from ground roots of the cassava tree, into which she squeezes the sweet juice of the brown plumb-sized cork fruit for flavour.

Households that still have maize-meal can stretch it by mixing it with the ground cassava tree roots. "The porridge doesn't taste good, but it gives people energy throughout the day when there is no food available; and for families with livestock, they then mix the meal with sour or fresh milk," said Nyoni.

Dried bean leaves (umfushwa in the Ndebele language) were a useful emergency ration when boiled, Nyoni said. "The advantage with dried umfushwa is that you can keep it for a long time from the last harvest, and it will still be fine until the next harvest, and it has a high nutritional value compared to some of the foods that people eat during droughts."
An alternative cookbook

The survivor's cookbook also includes, in the Shona language, the potato-like madhumbe and mufarinya, and several other edible and reputedly medicinal tubers, a range of berries, and wild vegetables such as derere - a type of okra - and nyeve, a bitter-tasting plant that can be boiled in a soup or eaten dried.

Care needs to be taken when foraging for wild foods: there have already been reported cases of accidental poisoning due to people picking the wrong plants, or preparing them incorrectly.

"This is now the time when the elderly, who have survived in previous droughts, play a crucial role, as the young people have no idea which trees have edible roots and which ones do not," said Themba Dlomo, another Lupane area villager.

A lack of inputs – seeds and fertiliser – drastically cut last season's harvest. The UN estimates that more than five million Zimbabweans - nearly half the population - will require emergency food assistance in the first quarter of 2009.

The hardship is exacerbated by an inflation rate of 231 million percent, which has pushed even price-controlled maize - in theory available from the state-run Grain Marketing Board (GMB) - way beyond the reach of rural Zimbabweans.

Villagers in Lupane alleged that maize delivered to the local GMB depot was finding its way onto the parallel market. "The maize arrives on a weekly basis but we do not get any, as it is transported to as far as Victoria Falls [on the border with Zambia], where it is sold in foreign currency, and we are left to scavenge for wild fruits with the wild animals," said Laiza Ncube.

For most Zimbabweans, eating wild plant foods is an indication of crisis, but since last year the University of Zimbabwe has tried to promote consumption as a sensible food security option.

"The nutritional properties and traditional knowledge of wild foods have been dismissed as 'old wives tales' or 'poor man's food'. Little is known about their health and nutritional benefits," Dr Maud Muchuweti of the Department of Biochemistry has maintained.

"We want to create more awareness of the value of indigenous wild plant foods and promote their effective utilisation."

IRIN 

The Ghanaian government, backed by the World Bank, is expanding a cash handout programme to help families hit hardest by global food price hikes. But some local development experts question whether the approach has lasting benefits.

Government officials say the initiative expands a cash transfer programme begun earlier this year, and aims to help subsistence farmers already reeling from natural disasters when food and fuel prices spiked.

Some say the programme, known as Emergency Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP), does not live up to its name of empowering poor communities.

The emergency LEAP in Ghana will provide 21,000 households US$15 per month (about half an average monthly income for recipient households) for seven months. Most of those receiving the cash are farmers in northern Ghana, which last year saw severe flooding and this year drought.

“[The cash] should help these families survive until the next harvesting season,” Angela Asante Asare, national coordinator in charge of social protection at the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment, told IRIN.

“It’s become an emergency situation because their crops have been destroyed by drought,” she said. “They cannot harvest, which means without assistance most of these households will not survive.”

The best way forward?

But some civil society groups doubt that a cash handout is the best way to help poor families.

Steve Mateaw of the Integrated Social Development Centre in Ghana told IRIN giving cash to families fails to meet the programme’s stated objective of empowering people. “The scheme should have been designed to assist households set up small income-generating businesses that can provide sustained support to the entire family,” he said.

He questions the difference $15 a month can make. “Take a household with six individuals - how can you realistically expect $15 to sustain them till the end of the month?”

Cushioning food price rises

Many aid experts say distributing cash is an effective way to help people across West Africa cope with the impact of food price hikes.

For some beneficiaries of the initial LEAP programme earlier this year, the cash simply means the difference between feeding their children adequately and not. Michael Asante, a father of three in the capital, Accra, told IRIN he can now manage to feed his children at least once a day.

“We sometimes had days when we ate nothing but now at least I can make sure my kids eat something even if I have to go hungry.”

Another beneficiary of the first LEAP round told IRIN the money goes fast, but every bit of assistance helps. “The money cannot buy much,” said Nii Okulai Mensah, a father of one and a farmer. “It runs out quickly. But my family is grateful; nothing anyone does for us is too little. The money, though not enough, feeds us all.”

The 2007 UN human development report says an estimated 18.2 percent of Ghana’s 22 million people are considered extremely poor, living on less than a dollar a day.

As across West Africa, Ghana’s population saw a sharp hike in staple food prices earlier this year. A loaf of bread that cost the equivalent of 80 US cents in January now costs nearly three times that. The price of a bag of maize has gone up from 40 dollars a year ago to 75 dollars.

IRIN 

Protectionism, less aid not a solution

Governments should avoid reducing aid to developing countries’ agriculture and introducing protectionist trade measures in response to the unfolding global financial crisis, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf cautioned today.

In a statement marking the 34th Session of FAO’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS) from October 14-17, Diouf warned that such steps could increase the risk of another food crisis occurring next year.

That could happen despite the record 2008 cereal harvest which is now expected. According to the latest issue of FAO’s Crop Prospects and Food Situation report, production this year is forecast to increase 4.9 percent to a record 2 232 million tonnes. However some 36 countries around the world are still in need of external assistance as a result of crop failures, conflict or insecurity, or continuing local high prices, the report noted.

“The great uncertainty now enveloping international markets and the threat of global recession may tempt countries towards protectionism and towards reassessing their commitments to international development aid,” Diouf said.

“It would be unfortunate if this were to be the case and the recently mobilized political will towards enhanced international support for developing country agriculture were to evaporate,” he added.

From pan to fire

Diouf noted that the financial crisis, following hard on the heels of the soaring food price crisis which threw an additional 75 million people into hunger and poverty in 2007 alone, may well deepen the plight of the poor in developing countries. “Last year it was the pan,” Diouf said. “ Next year could be the fire”.

Commodity prices are currently dropping, mainly on expectation of favourable crop prospects but also because of a slowing world economy, among other factors. This could mean a cutback in plantings followed by reduced harvests in major exporting countries. Given continuing low grains stocks, this scenario could lead to another turn of record food prices next year – a catastrophe for millions who by then would be left with little money and no credit.

The impact of the financial crisis may also be felt in developing countries at the macro level, with further potentially negative effects on agriculture and food security, Diouf said. “Borrowing, bank lending, official development aid, foreign direct investment and workers’ remittances – all may be compromised by a deepening financial crisis”, he noted.

Urgent action

Diouf recalled that governments and world leaders agreed at an FAO High-Level Conference on World Food Security held last June that “the international community needs to take urgent and coordinated action to combat the negative impacts of soaring food prices on the world’s most vulnerable countries and populations”.

A G8 Summit in Japan a month later confirmed the resolve of world leaders to address global food security as a top priority and demonstrated a growing political will to reverse disturbing trends in global hunger, he noted.

“It is vital that this momentum be maintained,” Diouf said. “Unless political will and donor pledges are turned into real and immediate action, millions more may fall into deeper poverty and chronic hunger.”

“The global financial crisis should not make us forget the food crisis. Agriculture needs urgent and sustained attention too to make hunger and rural poverty part of history,” he added.

FAO 

Contributing to the Motion for the adoption of the report of the 2008 1st Ordinary Session of the ECOWAS parliament, Hon Sidia Jatta, National Assembly Member for Wuli West constituency, expressed profound alarm at the present food crisis. For Hon. Jatta, this is a threat because Gambian lands are so cheap that people from outside tend to come from anywhere and buy land while nothing is being done about the situation. “That is what has been seen happening and that is what is taking place in this country. People have started buying land all over, most especially along the coast. So in the final analysis, we are left with nothing but lands that are infertile,” Hon. Jatta observed.

“What frightens me about the food crisis is that it started covertly but now it is going to come open. Those countries who are aware of this very problem have started buying land in continents like Africa to cultivate and produce food in preparation for this prolonged crisis that has just started,” he noted.

Hon. Jatta went on to express the view that these are issues that the National Assembly has to sit down and address so as to come up with appropriate documents to be able to address the issue in a way that will put an end to the situation.

“We cannot just talk about them and stop there because this is going to be very serious and, with all that, they are telling us not to subsidise our agriculture when they are subsidising their agriculture to enable their farmers to compete,” he stated.

Commenting on the issue of the much talked about Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between Africa and Europe, Hon. Jatta expressed his belief that the EPAs are non-starters for Africa. He said: “They serve absolutely no purpose for this continent. The EPAs are not going to take us anywhere but rather they are going to ditch us all the more into the problems that we are facing economically. For me, the EPA holds nothing good for Africa,” Hon Jatta contended.