Household food stocks down to half in 38 districts

Household food stocks down to half in 38 districts
eKantipur.com, 11-Feb-08
BY PRABHAKAR GHIMIRE

Nepalis are already reeling under the rising prices of essential commodities, chiefly foodstuff. Worse lies ahead: Food, mainly food grain, is becoming scarce even at higher prices.

This could be a serious problem for a food-deficit country. International agencies, local officials and business persons acknowledge the looming crisis.

The Food Security Monitoring and Analysis System of the World Food Program (WFP) has reported that average household food stocks have gone down by half in 38 districts in the last three months (November 2007 to January 2008) compared to the same period a year earlier.

Increasing food prices mean that household stocks will be further strained in the next few months when recent harvests will have been consumed.

"The situation is very critical, particularly for the extreme poor who make up about 15 percent of the total population," said the WFP report, which estimates that around 3.8 million people will suffer greatly.

The crisis is looming large, said Richard F Ragan, country director of WFP-Nepal, who attributed the problem to factors like India's export ban on non-basmati rice, meager rise in domestic rice production and an unprecedented increase in international food prices. Nepal relies heavily on imports from India, which meet about half its total rice requirements.

"March, April, May and June will be the toughest months, as household stocks with the poor will be exhausted by then," Ragan added.

This shortage will be compounded by disruption in transportation (due to strikes and the tarai unrest) and lack of access to markets will also prevent many from being able to buy.

"Indications are that the tarai, a major production hub of the country, will also witness food shortages, unlike in previous years when the scarcity was limited to hilly regions," said Ragan.

Ministry of Agriculture data shows that the production of summer paddy will be higher by 17 percent this year. Even then, the cutoff of food shipments from India has caused prices to go up by 15 percent over the past few months.

"It signals a trend of increasing prices until the next harvest," the WFP report says, adding that once the old stocks in the market are exhausted, prices are expected to rise substantially.

Ganga Bishan Rathi, central vice president of Nepal Rice, Oil and Pulse Producers' Association, said that with rice stocks already running low, Nepal is going to witness a further rise in prices by at least 20 percent in the months ahead.

Recent WFP and FAO reports show that rice prices in the mountains are already 177 percent higher than in the tarai.

Food expert Bhola Man Singh Basnet said that Nepal needed a "food security mission" to increase food production and productivity as a way of dealing with the situation.

Although ambitious plans like food security banks have been mooted at the South Asian level they seem to be just an academic exercise with implementation nowhere in sight.

Beni Bahadur Rawal, general manager of the state-owned Nepal Food Corporation (NFC) - which has 15,000 tons of rice in stock - said that the corporation planned to buy an additional 20,000 tons against the expected crisis.

However, with the shortage already affecting rice mills and other producers, officials are skeptical the corporation will be able to make the procurement.

WFP has also warned about the possible consequences of the food shortage: It will force a large number of poor Nepalis to leave their villages and head for India to work as laborers. "Daily wage earners and low-end workers will be the most affected groups," said Ragan.

In the face of the rising prices, Nepali is raising the issue at the 31st governing council meeting of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) which is being held this week in Rome, Italy, said Hari Dahal, spokesperson of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Food shortage and consequent rise in prices are however a global problem today. The International Rice Research Institute, the Manila-based global body, reported that worldwide food stocks were down to 143 million tons in 2007, the lowest in 25 years due to the worldwide effects of floods, drought and global warming. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has also cautioned that lower food stocks and rising prices would mainly hit the least developed countries.