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| Food security in food deficit districts like here in Rukum is mainly due to the government's failure to develop the farming technology. |
Villagers who live in remote areas and are the ones who actually suffer from rice shortages rarely get to see the government supplied cereal. At the same time, rice is not the staple food in many districts suffering from food shortages.
Famine reports get prominence in many Kathmandu-based newspapers particularly during the pre-cultivation and post-harvest seasons from December to June, notorious as hungry months. At that time, mostly male farmers head off to India to find work and return only during farming and harvest time.
There has also been considerable speculation that the Maoists are responsible for low agricultural production because they seized farms producing an exodus of rural dwellers. But agricultural experts working in both the government and NGO sector say that this is not true at all.
No matter who owns the farms, rebels or villagers, agricultural production has remained stable and even grown in some districts where agriculture-focussed NGOs are implementing innovative farming and improved irrigation programs. The truth is however, that production on most farms provides hardly enough food for five months.
If there has been one negative influence on Nepal's food and agriculture, it is the lack of government agricultural programs, especially management of the food distribution system, marketing of agricultural products and establishing effective post-harvest food storage systems.
The UN's World Food Programme (WFP), which specialises in food security, has repeatedly said that our country, unlike Sudan's Darfur or other famine-hit African regions, does not face food crises so extreme that it requires emergency humanitarian relief.
A new WFP study, Household Food Security, provides an excellent analysis of food vulnerability in Nepal's food-deficit districts. Based on a sampling study conducted in 43 districts with 168 communities and 1,676 households, it provides the real causes of food shortage, its economic and health impacts and recommends ways to improve the situation.
It begins with the concept of 'hungry poor households' in 41 of the 43 districts. These include families who own limited assets, lack access to remittances from labour migration and live in larger households. The problem is especially acute in districts with low Human Development Indexes. Ethnically speaking, it is not just Dalits and Janjatis who suffer but Brahmins also, says the report.
The farms of the hungry poor do not generate enough food to meet household needs mostly due to small land holdings that result from distribution of lands among many male relatives. As a result, the families need to buy food from the market but due to a lack of cash they often end up in debt after buying on credit or borrowing at high interest rates.
According to the study, around 71 percent of the hungry poor often purchased food on credit or with borrowed money, which the WFP points out is a coping strategy rather than a productive activity.
The study found that an average of 44 percent of household expenditure is on cereals and less on nutritious food such as pulses, vegetables, fruit, milk and eggs. This often leads to low intake of proteins and micronutrients, one reason why these families face problems of malnourishment. The worst malnourishment among children is found in mountain regions, it added.
WFP recommends comprehensive solutions based on multi-sectoral approaches to improve food security. Access to improved farming technology, education, health care, employment and low-interest agricultural loans are needed, it says, along with "infrastructure improvements to develop a functioning agricultural market system".
The conflict has made delivering these solutions more difficult, points out the WFP, but it has not created the problems.
Household Food Security World Food Program, Nepal
