Hunger, HIV/AIDS and agriculture in Southern Africa

Hunger and HIV/AIDS are reinforcing each other in Southern Africa, "leading to a potentially tragic new level of famine," says a book published by a regional agricultural think-tank. The World Bank's annual report, released last week, also raises concerns over the pandemic's impact, pointing out that most people affected by HIV and AIDS depend on agriculture.

Food consumption has been found to drop by 40 percent in homes afflicted by HIV/AIDS, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); globally, Southern Africa is the region most affected by the pandemic.

The situation has been exacerbated by severe drought in Lesotho, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique this year, with significant production deficits and high staple food prices limiting market access for households that have already run out of food they have managed to grow themselves.

AIDS has killed around 7 million agricultural workers since 1985 in the 25 hardest-hit countries, mostly in east and southern Africa, where AIDS-related illnesses could kill 16 million more before 2020, and up to 26 percent of their agricultural labour force within two decades, said the FAO.

Often described as "new variant famine" or "HIV-induced famine," this form is radically different from traditional famines, said the book, Silent Hunger: Policy Options for Effective Responses to the Impact of HIV and AIDS on Agriculture and Food Security in the SADC Region.

"The paradox is that while the traditional drought-related famines kill dependents first (children and elderly), the HIV-related 'silent hunger' affects the most productive family members first."

The book is based on a study commissioned by the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) on the impact of HIV and AIDS in the seven most affected countries in Southern Africa: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Alex de Waal, an activist and writer, and Alan Whiteside, director of the HIV/AIDS research division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, were the first to outline the "new variant famine" concept.

The FANRPAN book is critical of regional governments' response to the "invisible famine", which they describe as "slow" and inadequate", and presents a case for prioritising social protection.

In one of the first comprehensive studies on the impact of the pandemic on agriculture in the region, the book has uncovered some startling facts: in Botswana, the majority - 81 percent of respondents - had three or more meals per day before they contracted HIV, but after they became ill this dropped to 49 percent.

Approximately two people-years of labour have been lost by the time one person dies of AIDS, due to their weakening and the time others spend giving care, said the book, citing various studies.

James Breen, an agronomist based in Southern Africa, said, "Forty percent of the population in some of the countries in the region live with the HIV/AIDS, and at least 70 [percent] to 80 percent of the region's population depend on subsistence agriculture. At the best of times, small-scale farmers can expect subsistence, but with impact of natural disasters or, worst of all, HIV/AIDS, they have to liquidate all their assets for treatment, and they have no access to safety nets."

The authors of Silent Hunger commented: "Due to cultural and social traditions, women bear the brunt of the epidemic, both in terms of providing care for people living with HIV and AIDS as well as being at risk for HIV infection." UNAIDS has estimated that 57 percent of people living HIV and AIDS in southern Africa are women.

Of the seven countries participating in the study, four - Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Namibia - reported that most rural households were led by women; the exceptions were Swaziland, Zambia and Lesotho.

In Swaziland, gender inequality and poverty have contributed to the HIV and AIDS epidemic. "The practice of polygamy increases the risk of women being infected. Women are also tasked with the responsibility of caring for the sick members of the household, which also increases the risk of getting infected," said De Waal and Whiteside. "When the man falls sick, it is the responsibility of the wife to provide care and take on additional duties to support the family. However, when the wife becomes sick, it is traditionally the responsibility of other women (not the husband) to provide care."

The book quoted a woman small-scale farmer in Botswana as saying, "I have not ploughed for the past five years because of taking care of AIDS children, who eventually died. So not only have I lost my children, but I have no food or seeds to start production. The sad thing is that my small [live]stock also strayed while I was running from one health provider to the next in the hope of saving my children."

In Zimbabwe, the FANRPAN study found that, traditionally, women were dispossessed of their land or assets after the deaths of their husbands, and continuation of the practice means they are left with little or no assets.

According to Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, the executive director of FANRPAN, southern Africa needs longitudinal household surveys that will track the impact of the pandemic on agriculture and food security. "We need trends analyses if we are to adequately inform policy development. Short term ad hoc studies are not giving a full picture of the pandemic’s impact".

IRIN

Subsidies, market distortions : Why food aid to Malawi continues despite bumper harvest

Malawi seems to be awash with corn. It has been the best harvest in a dozen years or more. So why in this time of historic plenty, is the rich world still sending its unwanted food to Malawi?

Malawi has had a rough decade. Staggering under the effects of an Aids epidemic that affects one in five of the population in some districts, there were famines in 2002, 2003 and one in 2005, when a third of Malawi's 13 million people ran out of food. Until this April, over 300,000 were still being fed emergency rations by the United Nations World Food Programme. Malawi deserved a good year.

But record harvests don't necessarily guarantee good times. "We have so much maize this year," says 59 year old Felicita Bailoni. "But we have a problem over where to sell it. It's not just that the price is so low because there is so much maize, there isn't anyone to sell it to. The traders normally visit the village but they haven't come." Even in the time of plentiful food she's worried. She and her husband Stephen look after her two grandchildren, whose mother died three years ago, and two other orphans.

Most households in their village, Kunthembwe, have taken in the children of those who have died from Aids - which is particularly severe here around Blantyre in southern Malawi. Felicita and her enlarged family have more than enough food for today and for the year ahead - but they need cash to pay the children's school fees, for clothes and other necessities. And maize corn is so plentiful at the moment it fetches only eight Malawian kwacha, or about 3p a kilo - if you can sell it. In 2005, the price went up to 50 kwacha a kilo. The Bailonis are hoping to sell 100 50kg bags of corn ears. "But if we wait till the price goes up, the weevils will spoil our maize," says Felicita.

"The price is so low," says Charles Rethman, a Malawi-based analyst of what the NGOs call "food security"', 'that we have a concern now about next year. Farmers will be put off growing maize, and they won't have the cash to buy the seeds for the next planting. So in 2008 we're looking at the possibility of another food crisis. So it's really important that we do everything we can to get the price up to a level that rewards the farmers."

With so much cheap corn available Rethman is bemused by a US government deal, announced in April, to ship $19.5 million of American corn and soya to Malawi as food aid. "It's nonsense," he says.

Everywhere in the villages it is the the same story : Plenty of maize but no market. This affects the very poorest. Yet money is needed to pay for school fees, soap, clothes and for medicine.

At a primary school, hundreds of excited children, each clutching a large mug, are circulating around a camp of vast cooking stoves, 23 of them. Women in brightly-coloured wraps stir vats of grainy yellow porridge. This is CSB - corn-soya blend - a mix of maize meal and soya flour, vitamins and sugar widely used in emergency feeding around the world. Locally it's called likuniphala. For many of the children it's the first meal of the day and for some it will be the only one.

CSB is a wonderful product and the teachers are delighted. "Look at the children - they are now so energetic. They don't fall asleep in class. They don't fight over each other's food, like they used to. They're fatter!" says Gertrude Sonani, who teaches 13-year-olds. But the effect goes further than just feeding the kids. Children come to the school because of the meal - class numbers are up by about 7 per cent in every age group since the feeding programme began in January.

In a country where only 70 per cent of the children attend primary school, that's an achievement. At another nearby primary school, the head teacher, Annie Jana, said she now had 800 eight-year-olds, compared to 500 when the programme started a year ago. "Absenteeism has fallen, and even children who dropped out are coming back, especially girls." And in Malawi, getting girls into school has always been difficult, which is why half of all women are illiterate.

School feeding is such an obviously good idea that the aid agencies and the Malawian government have been bringing more and more schools into the programme since it began in 1999. Most of the CSB comes free from the World Food Programme (WFP), which uses donated corn and soya - some of it from the Malawian government - and more that it buys locally.

Impressed by all this, in April the US Government announced that it wanted to join in. It would give WFP nearly $20 million over three years to help fund an expansion of the programme so, from 2008, 650,000 Malawian children get a daily mug of porridge at school. At the same time it announced similar schemes for Kenya, Cambodia, Guinea and Pakistan. WFP applauds the deal.

But not everyone in the country was overjoyed. "It's very short-sighted - it doesn't make any sense. It's going to short-circuit the effort to improve nutrition here, it undermines farmers, households. It's not sustainable and it won't bring about any long-term change to malnutrition rates," said Charles Rethman, echoing many critics of the plan.

The problem is - though WFP left this detail out of their press release - that the US grant came with a condition : it had to be spent on American CSB to be bought from American farmers and put in American ships to be transported to Malawi. According to WFP, the cost of buying, transporting and packing the annual 8,000 tonnes of US CSB will be $812 a tonne. SIR, which will buy about 3,600 tonnes of Malawian CSB - likuni phala - this year, expects to pay around $320 a tonne (distribution costs add another 5 per cent). Simply, if the American money was spent in Malawi, it could feed nearly two-and-a-half times as many schoolchildren.

Said one angry aid worker : "This is giving aid with one hand and taking it away with another. It's the Big Man saying : kneel down before I give you the help. These people, they get the food, they are vulnerable, they clap their hands and say, "Thank you Mr. Bush". They don't understand what's really going on."

The World Food Programme's man in Malawi, Dom Scalpelli, defends this particular policy. WFP needs the US, from where 43 per cent of all the food aid WFP provides comes from. 98 per cent of it is 'in kind' - American corn, soya, rice, oil and beans, shipped at considerable expense to where it's needed. Says Scalpelli, "The child doesn't care if his porridge is Malawian or American. The important thing is that more of them are going to be getting it. And American CSB is cheaper than Malawian."

In fact the two cost about the same, but Scalpelli is being disingenuous. The price of shipping and administration - and it is US law that American companies are used for packing and shipping 75 per cent of American food aid - puts the cost of the US-sourced CSB at absurdly high levels. Only a third of the money granted for food aid actually goes on food - the rest is transport and administration. The US Congress's Government Accountability Office has criticised the system, saying that a $10-per-tonne cut in shipping rates would enable the feeding of 850,000 more people. Indeed, Malawi would have done better if the US Government had written WFP a cheque for cost of shipping and administering the grant, and not sent any American food at all.

Surely, Scalpelli was asked, it would be better if the Americans gave cash and you spent it in the Malawian market - you don't just feed the children but you also support Malawian farmers. Isn't it nonsense, when Malawi has just brought in a record-breaking harvest?

"Yes of course we'd have taken the money and yes, we could have sourced it locally. But the reality of what we're living through is that you take advantage of any grain you can get. The CSB is not displacing the local Malawian CSB - it's going to schools and it's being eaten, it's targeted and it's not going on to the market. The local farmers will still get business from us - and we'll still buy Malawian CSB."

"It's absurd," counters Charles Rethman. "You could feed twice as many children, create jobs, stimulate the maize price and help the farmers. Anything that will increase demand for farmers is a good thing : this flies in the face of the Malawian government's development strategy and its attempts to stand on its own two feet."

The story of how American corn gets in Malawian children's porridge begins in the great-plains states like Kansas and Iowa, where, as the American food policy critic Michael Pollan puts it, there is "a plague of cheap corn." It's a tale that begins in 1973, when the Nixon administration started directly subsidising corn (maize) farmers in a way that encouraged them to produce as much as possible. That policy has meant an ever-increasing excess of American corn, which most years costs the US taxpayer some $5-$10 billion to subsidise. As Pollan says, the money, which in 2005 kept the price of corn at around half what it costs to produce, is in effect a subsidy for the big American companies that buy and process the corn - and these companies and their political supporters are the ones that dictate American farm policy. Meanwhile the unwanted corn has to go somewhere - and dumping it abroad has always been one of the answers.

Some 20 per cent of US corn is exported, and at times the proportion going as food aid has matched that. In 2003 America provided 56 per cent of all the food aid in the world. But an indicator that the richest nation's motives are not entirely charitable is that, throughout those years, America's food aid volumes increased massively at times when prices in the US were depressed - up to 20 per cent of American cereals production goes abroad as food aid when the market is down, but when domestic prices are high this figure falls to just five per cent. In 1993, when global food aid reached an all-time high of 17.3 million tonnes (in 2005, the last year for which there are complete records the figure was 8.25 million tonnes), US prices of staples like corn and rice were at historic lows.

The many critics of American food aid make the point that the buying up of US farmers' surpluses is another way of subsidising them - and, most years, federal payments make up about half the income of the average Iowa corn farmer. Such unprecedented support puts up a wall against farmers from the developing world who want to sell in the markets of the rich. The European Union abandoned food aid in kind in 1999 - all but two per cent now goes as cash - and Peter Mandelson, as Europe's trade commissioner, has called for 'radical reform' from the Americans.

But this was generally seen as pretty hypocritical. Most aid-agency observers reckon the EU has used American intransigence as an excuse to put off reforms of European farm subsidies - like the notorious two euros a day each cow on the continent receives - again, a way of putting up a barrier against the farmers of Africa, South American and Asia. This produces real absurdities - it's often pointed out that the money the rich world gives in aid to poor countries, often to help improve agriculture, is worth less than what those countries could earn if Europe and America simply reformed their subsidies and opened up their markets.

"Emergency food aid in humanitarian situations is of course a good thing, but it can and does often do more harm than good," says Ann Witteveen, Oxfam's food security coordinator for southern Africa. "The very promise of free food can cause disaster-hit populations to leave their homes and move to refugee camps. They may become dependent on it, making it harder for them to take up their lives again when the disaster or danger has passed. Farmers leave their fields, prices fall and local traders lose their businesses. Clearly, while food aid saves lives in a disaster, it can hamper the return to normality."

Malawi itself has a blatant example of the damage that can be wrought by food aid. In 2002, a crisis was predicted, after a shortfall of 600,000 tonnes in the harvest. Unusually, the international community provided exactly what had been appealed for - but the sums were wrong. Malawi was flooded with cheap grain and the price of maize dropped from $250 a tonne to $100 a tonne during 2003. Malawian farmers suffered : the loss to the Malawian economy was estimated at $15m, and local production of not just maize but also of key crops like cassava and rice dropped massively. All this made it harder for Malawi to return to self-sufficiency when the crisis was over. Even last year, when Malawi had a 250,000 tonne surplus of maize, the US still shipped in over 40,000 tonnes of American food as aid.

From across the world, there are stories of how, once a dependency on food aid has been established and local production destroyed, the aid stops and commercial supply begins - not so different and hardly more moral than the tactics of a drug pusher. This has happened with American soya beans in the Philippines and Japanese rice in Jamaica. Subsidised dairy produce from Europe has, according to Oxfam, put milk farmers out of business in a number of Caribbean countries.

Food aid could be on the way out. Corn prices are high in the US this year, and the futures market is very excited at the prospects of using those great grain mountains for producing ethanol - bio-diesel - and thus addressing another of the rich world's pressing problems. Europe, Canada and Australia have all been persuaded to convert some or all of their food-aid programmes to cash, rather than in kind. Among the major donors only America, Japan and China hold out.

There is mounting pressure in the US for changes in the food-aid system, driven by a damning report from the US Congress about the inefficiencies. It highlighted the $171 a tonne that US carriers charge, compared with the $100 a tonne WFP can normally get from its own contractors. It also found that US food aid frequently is contaminated or infested by insects by the time it arrives in the country that needs it.

Increasingly, it seems, the developing world may take matters into its own hands. One government official in Malawi said that ministries there had not been informed about the this year's US grant, and would be very unhappy about it. Last year Eritrea, a food-aid addict for all of the country's brief and tragic history, declared that, for the dignity of its people and in order to end 'a culture of dangerous dependency', it would accept no more food aid.

"Food aid," says Mary Khozombah of Oxfam forcefully, "should be the last resort, in an emergency - and even then it should be bought locally if possible. Of course, if people say we want to give you food, we'll say yes - you can't say no. Poor nations like us too often just accept the charity without looking properly at the effects. But in the long term it really kills our people."

The Guardian

The impact of HIV/AIDS on agriculture in Southern Africa

A recent study has shown the possible impact on agriculture-dependent households in which either or both the adults have HIV/Aids. Some research organisations in the area of food security, for instance, anticipate that labour loss in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) because of the epidemic will be between 12,7% and 26% in the next two decades.

Whichever way one looks at it, this is a frightening scenario.

In an October 2006 report, the World Food Programme said that the high prevalence of HIV/Aids in Southern Africa had a direct negative impact on food security. Health experts, it said, estimated that between seven and eight million farmers in the region have been lost to HIV/Aids over the past few years.

A study commissioned last year by the Southern Africa Trust — a regional non-profit agency which supports and encourages inclusive policy dialogue aimed at poverty reduction — found that 24,7-million people in sub-Saharan Africa were living with HIV/Aids, and that 59% of that figure was accounted for by women and children.

Malawi-based Victor Mhoni, of the Civil Society Agriculture Network (Cisanet), said of the relationship between the epidemic and the decline in farming activity in the region : “This pandemic wreaks havoc with farm labour patterns since there is now a lot of time spent by labourers on tending to the sick, thus neglecting farming activities. Also, when people in urban areas get sick, they usually go home to rural areas to be close to their families. This often creates a situation where families no longer properly stick to their farming calendars.”

Cesar Palha de Sousa of the organisation Cruzeiro do Sul in Mozambique said : “We have evidence here in Mozambique — based on surveys on the effects of HIV/Aids and the functioning of rural markets — that the composition of households has largely changed as a result of the deaths of people still in their prime.”

But, said Palha de Sousa, this composition changes more in cases where the death is that of a man than it does in cases where the woman dies, because when a woman dies and leaves a man behind, society will be quicker to provide the widower with a new spouse. The problem with this is that if the man has HIV/Aids, he will then infect the new spouse, thus leading to a vicious cycle of infection and death. This in turn will lead to a further rapid decline of the labour force and with that comes less agricultural productivity.

The FANRPAN study illustrates the possible impacts and responses of agriculture-dependent households in which either or both of the adults have HIV/Aids. If one of them becomes sick, he or she will work less, meaning that labour has to be imported. The imported labour could perhaps be a relative. But sometimes there may not be replacement labour. At the same time, health expenses will rise. In the event that replacement labour is not found, household consumption is likely to drop and there will eventually come a point at which the ill adult stops working altogether.

Because the children will have to spend more time tending to the ill parent, they may drop out of school. Meanwhile, debts creep up. Finally, the adult will die and funeral expenses will be incurred. The household may fragment as members of the family migrate to seek work in the cities,leaving the land lying fallow. Access to the household land may also be affected by issues surrounding the property rights to the surviving widow or children. The downward spiral accelerates from then on, says FANRPAN.

The realisation that the countries most affected by HIV/Aids also experienced slow growth in agricultural productivity and an increase in food insecurity over the last two decades, has led to the establishment of national Aids commissions in every SADC country. Farmers’ associations have also started awareness programmes and are trying to link farmers to organisations dealing with HIV/Aids.

Mail and Guardian

How HIV/AIDS is changing farming gender roles in Swaziland

Swaziland recently announced a 'Woman Farmer of the Year' competition, acknowledging the contribution of women to the nation's food production. Until 2006, women were regarded as minors in terms of the law, unable to own property or open a bank account without the permission of a male relative or husband.

But the world's highest HIV/AIDS infection rate has left many farms in the hands of women. "More and more, women are taking over the running of family farms. Society is realising that women are out in the fields as much as in the kitchen, but they need training and support," said Sempiwe Dlamini, an extension officer for the ministry of agriculture.

The southern Shiselweni region, where Dlamini works, has been hit hard by drought and HIV/AIDS. Most farm-owners are either widows whose husbands had previously planted, weeded and harvested, or children who have lost their parents to AIDS. About a third of all adults in Swaziland are infected with HIV. "The country's new farmers are able-bodied women in their twenties through fifties, though some may be teenagers, and some even older," said Dlamini, who has worked with subsistence farmers for years. She said it was unfortunate that the patriarchal Swazi traditions kept women away from the fields, which were considered the province of men. "They were only a few metres away, cooking and cleaning, but they never learned to farm," she said.

"A woman's hand on the plough was considered bad luck," said Nelsiwe Nhlabatsi, 25, a primary school teacher. "Now many of the children in my class have their school fees paid by women who plough the land." One such woman is Thabsile Hlope, 36, of Mliba village, 30km north of commericial centre Manzini. She was forced to manage the farm when her husband died of a "wasting illness" in 2006. "He was never tested for HIV, so you cannot say he died of AIDS," she said.

Though her farm is small, there were many neighbours who would have gladly incorporated it into their own holdings. About 80 percent of Swazis reside on communal Swazi Nation Land, where permission to work an agricultural plot, and the possibility of passing this on to their children, depends on their ability to keep land granted to them by area chiefs. "One of the dangers of parents dying of AIDS is that their children are robbed of their heritage. The farms may be taken over by relatives, or the community elders give the fields to other adults : the children grow up to inherit nothing," said Doo Apane, an attorney and advocate for women's rights.

The Swaziland branch of Women in Law for Southern Africa has been advocating for the customary mourning period for women to be revisited. By tradition, widows must retire from public view and productive work for up to two years after the death of their husbands. With AIDS deaths mounting, the mourning period prohibits widows from returning to work in town or farms to support their families.

Hlope's maize crop, like many others, has failed mainly because of the drought, but she could also do with some training in farming. "My 14-year-old son worked the plough with my husband - he planted the seedsin the ground. I know how to weed from my garden; I raise tomato and cabbage there. The whole family used to help with the harvest," she said. But the use of fertiliser and hybrid seeds, crop rotation and alternative drought-tolerant crops, are new to her.

The Woman Farmer of the Year can win cash prizes as well as farming implements, and comes with an instruction course for women. "This type of tutoring is essential for all women farmers, coupled with donated implements," said Dlamini.

Wilma Maziya, a widow and subsistence farmer in the eastern Lubombo region, said the authorities should provide them with access to markets for their surplus production, with additional support for ventures into commercial farming. Maziya beat the region's usual lack of rainfall by planting sorghum next to her maize this year. There is a dramatic difference between the section of her field that is brown with withered maize stalks and the row upon row of green and upright sorghum plants, each topped with a large inverted cone of brown grain. "We will cook the sorghum or trade it with neighbours. But where can I sell it? There are no markets here," she said. She has never been visited by a representative of the National Agricultural Marketing Board, which was set up to encourage farmers to raise their standard of living by growing cash crops, and helps by trucking their crops to central wholesalers. "If I could sell my surplus sorghum, I would grow more," Maziya said.

Agriculture Ministry workers like Dlamini are encouraged that women farmers like Maziya have the experience, capacity and willingness to do more to increase national food production. "Swaziland used to be self-sufficient in food," she said. "I have no doubt that if the women are given the assistance they need - because the nation needs them now more than ever - we will go a long way to making the most of our national potential."

IRIN