Drought, Floods, War Leave 35 Countries Hungry

ROME, Italy, June 1, 2004 (ENS) - Natural disasters, drought, civil conflict and disease have left 35 countries with serious shortages of food, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) warned Monday. The majority of the hungry nations - two dozen - are in Africa.

Christine Kanga of Kenya, whose husband died last year, is bedridden with AIDS. But she must look after her five children, as well as three orphans left by her brother-in-law, another AIDS victim. (Photo by Vanessa Vick courtesy WFP)

While devastating, the floods last week in Hispaniola that have claimed at least 2,000 lives and left thousands of other people homeless and starving is not the only food emergency humanitarian agencies are trying to alleviate.

In western Sudan, civil conflict has displaced over one million people, triggering a grave humanitarian crisis, the FAO said.

Desert locusts remain a serious threat to crops in northern and western Africa, where control operations are hampered by a lack of resources, the FAO reports.

"Locusts are breeding in thousands of spots over large areas south of the Atlas Mountains stretching from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to western Libya," said Clive Elliott, senior officer of the FAO locust group. "An upsurge is under way in the region."

The FAO called upon Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal to prepare intensive survey and control operations against possible desert locust swarms arriving from the north and invading crop-producing areas in the Sahel.

Desert locust swarm milling over a field of harvested millet north of Bambey, Senegal in 1993. (Photo by M. de Montaigne courtesy FAO)

More than $40 million have been spent since October 2003 on locust control operations, mostly provided by locust-affected countries. The last desert locust plague, in 1987-1989, took more than $300 million before it was brought to an end.

In southern Africa, delayed, inadequate and erratic rains caused flood damage and left many people in need of emergency food aid to survive. Food assistance has been rushed to people left homeless by serious flooding in western Zambia and parts of Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe.

In eastern Africa, drought extending from Ethiopia and Kenya south to Mozambique and Lesotho has left once fertile crop lands parched and desolate.

Zimbabwe could face acute food shortages as early estimates of 2004 food production indicate a potential deficit of up to one million metric tons of grain. But a United Nations food aid team was forced to halt its work in the country in May after its Zimbabwean members were recalled without explanation to the capital Harare, said Mwita Rukandema of the FAO in Rome.

A North Korean mother watches over her malnourished child at a hospital in Hyangsan county, North Pyongan province, March 24, 2004. (Photo courtesy WFP)

Other Asian countries are also in trouble as food supplies shrink. The island nation of Sri Lanka has been affected by drought with rice production falling 18 percent in 2004 leaving thousands of families in need of food assistance.

Afghanistan and Iraq are both on the list of hungry countries with drought and conflict the reason for food shortages in each of these trouble spots. In Afghanistan, early snowmelt and high temperatures this spring may adversely affect cereal crops, the FAO said. In Iraq, the reduced numbers of international humanitarian workers is affecting delivery of food aid.

But the news for Asia is not all bad. India is the second largest producer of wheat after China. This year's Indian wheat output, while revised downward, still shows a sharp increase over last year and the 2004 wheat area and output are estimated to be above last year and above the five year average.

Food assistance continues to be delivered in Central American countries to rural families affected by a depressed coffee sector, the study found. The effects of adverse weather have left El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua in need of food aid.

In Argentina and Brazil, the maize crop has been affected by drought during the growing season, the FAO reports. In Ecuador and Peru, dry weather has caused a reduction in production of winter rice and first season maize crops.

Large Atlantic food fishes will be monitored more closely than ever before, as nations on the FAO's Fishery Committee of the Eastern Central Atlantic (CECAF) realize how vulnerable these species are.

The FAO regional fishing body has decided that its 33 members should begin reporting capture levels of non-tuna species taken in high seas waters off the western coast of Africa.

The decision was announced on May 27 after a three day CECAF meeting in Dakar, Senegal. The Committee cited the fragility of the undersea habitats that these species depend on and their slow growth rates as reasons for its resolution.

Alfonsino is a slow-growing, deep water fish species that is found only on sea mounts. (Photo courtesy Australia National Oceans Office)

While current catch levels of the alfonsino and similar deep water fishes in the CECAF zone are low, there is growing commercial interest in these species, according to the FAO, prompting the decision by CECAF countries to begin submitting annual reports on high-seas fishing activities for non-tuna species.

Monitoring will occur in waters under CECAF's jurisdiction, which extends west from the African coast to the mid-Atlantic, starting from the northern tip of Morocco and ending at the border between Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.