Over
6 Million Face Food
Insecurity In Afghanistan
By IRIN News
07 July, 2007
IRIN News
KABUL, 5 July 2007
(IRIN) - Three out of 10 Afghans suffer from chronic food insecurity,
which badly affects the health and well-being of the estimated 27-million
nation, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
According to FAO, 6.5 million
people face food insecurity in Afghanistan in 2007.
"Food insecurity means
that people do not have access at all times to the quality and quantity
of food they require to lead a healthy life," said Charlotte Dufour,
an adviser to FAO, on 4 July.
Fifty-seven percent of Afghan
households have insufficient food diversity (indicating poor quality)
and over 20 percent of households do not have access to enough food,
according to a national rural vulnerability assessment conducted jointly
by the Afghan government and the UN in 2003.
FAO says some far-flung provinces
such as Bamyan, Daykundi and Ghor face a "critical situation"
and require long-term development projects to reduce household vulnerability
to food crises.
Some provinces are particularly
food insecure because of factors such as high altitude and long winters,
lack of water, or remoteness and difficulties of access. Heavy snowfalls
and avalanches during winter months regularly block roads to and from
rugged and mountainous provinces such as Ghor, Daykundi, Bamyan and
Badakhshan.
Food aid - last resort
However, experts say food
aid should only be used as a last resort when local or regional food
availability is limited.
"Food aid can have negative
impacts such as creating dependency on external assistance," warned
Dufour.
Afghanistan's Ministry of
Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) has raised hopes that 2007
will mark at least a seven percent increase in the country's overall
agricultural production, due to desirable rainfall in the drought-stricken
country.
In 2007, Afghanistan is expected
to produce 5,584 metric tonnes (mt) of cereals, including wheat, rice,
maize and barley, but the country will still require 526mt to be imported,
indicated a MAIL report released on 4 July.
No mass starvation
In 2006 certain areas of
Afghanistan faced a food crisis when demand for food surpassed supply
inside the country, FAO reported.
Floods and torrential rainfall,
according to Afghan officials, have caused extensive damage to agriculture
and livestock across Afghanistan.
"The floods have caused
destruction on a local basis which will not have big implications for
the whole country," Dufour said. Afghans are unlikely to face mass
starvation.
While hundreds of thousands
of Afghan children (or more than half of Afghan children under five)
do not take adequate nutrition and other recommended edibles on a daily
basis, acute malnutrition (severe weight loss) affects an estimated
5 to 10 percent of children under five, according to the government
and UN.
Dufour, who also worked in
Afghanistan during Taliban rule in 2000, said acute malnutrition affected
mostly children under two, and was often caused by diarrhoea and other
hygienic problems.
"Early stopping of breastfeeding,
or failure to give young children adequate food after six months, are
also major causes of acute malnutrition," he said.
Afghan children will, however,
experience the implications of inadequate food security and nutrition
in terms of their mental and physical growth, warn experts.
Nearly self-sufficient in
cereals
Food insecurity has been
considered a chronic problem in Afghanistan affecting the lives of millions
of Afghans for decades, government officials say.
Feeding a majority of its
population through an underdeveloped agriculture Afghanistan is, in
a good year, 90 percent self-sufficient in cereal production, according
to MAIL, but it has a long way to go to properly feed its growing population,
aid officials say.
Afghanistan needs to preserve
its natural resources (including forests, rangelands, wildlife and plants),
improve water and irrigation management, diversify agricultural production,
expand its fruit and vegetable production, improve livestock production
and help households diversify their sources of income in order to overcome
the challenges millions of its citizens face now, FAO said.
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