An Impending Food Emergency in Nepal

Less food, more mouths to feed
NepaliTimes, Issue #463 (07-Aug-09 to 13-Aug-09)
KUNDA DIXIT

New report warns of an impending food emergency in Nepal

Nepal suffers chronic food shortage, but a convergence of crises has created a food emergency which could have serious political repercussions in the coming year.

An apocalyptic new report by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) warns of a "sharp and sustained decline" in food production in Nepal. Even if only some of WFP's predictions come true, food shortages could trigger widespread social unrest.

'The Cost of Coping: A Collision of Crises' adds up the cost of the global fuel, food and economic crises and how these are magnified by a stagnation in Nepal's food production, growing population and political instability. In addition, a cycle of droughts and floods has pushed an already vulnerable population to the edge of famine.

As a result, 3.4 million Nepalis don't have enough to eat. An additional five million Nepalis have fallen below the poverty line in the past three years: forcing them to take children out of school, east seed stock or sell land.

'If current production growth rates remain constant?it is likely that within the next 3-5 years Nepal will become food deficit at a national level even during years of normal harvest,' warns the report.

There are more mouths to feed, but Nepal's rice production actually fell by one percent between 2002-2007, while harvests increased by 16 percent in Bangladesh and 31 percent in India. Nepal's investment in agriculture fell from 30 percent of the budget to 5 percent in 2008, and even so only 16.5 percent of the allocated money was spent.

"The three aspects of food security: production, availability and affordability, and we have to respond to each," says Yubaraj Khatiwada, the newly-appointed head of the National Planning Comission.

The winter drought in 2006-7 was followed by another eight-month drought last winter and then a bad monsoon this summer. This may lead to a food grain deficit of more than 200,000 tons because winter harvests in the mountains came down by half and even the Tarai may suffer huge rice harvest shortfalls this summer.

But at the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MoAC), spokesman Hari Dahal says the WFP report is "alarmist". He admits the food deficit has affected 700,000 people, and adds: "I haven't heard anyone dying of hunger. there is no shortage."

But even the MoAC's own figures point to a harvest shortfall. This needs urgent investment in agricultural infrastructure and subsidies for inputs. New technologies for dryland rice like the System for Rice Intensification (SRI) need to be promoted. (See box, below) All this needs the political will to grasp Nepal's food emergency and do something about it.

Sixty percent of children under five in the mountains are undernourished: one of the worst figures in the world. Nepal is now even more unlikely to achieve the UN's goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

The government needs more effective distribution of subsidised grain to hotspots, expansion of food for work programs like the ones implemented by WFP, and school meals for vulnerable children.

The WFP report concludes with this dire warning: 'If urgent action is not taken to address Nepal's food crisis, then the situation will deterioirate further through this decade and the next?urgent prioritisation of national food security is required at the highest level of the Nepal government and supporting development partners.'

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