World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

The United Nations food relief agency today announced it is scaling up its efforts to assist more than 3.5 million people in drought-hit areas of southern Africa, particularly in Malawi, Zimbabwe and Lesotho, who are now facing the start of the hunger season. “Large numbers of smallholder farmers and their families are in the grip of what is set to be one of the harshest hunger seasons of recent years,” said the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Deputy Regional Director for Southern Africa, Brenda Barton.

Lesotho's smallholder farmers are struggling as maize production is devastated after alternate drought and heavy rains. Some are being supported by WFP through a Food for Assets project in two districts. Others have moved into the towns in search of work.

Lesotho is facing a food security crisis as changing weather patterns and poverty leave some smallholder farmers with no option but to abandon farming and sell their land. (..) Many subsistence farmers in Lesotho are still struggling to recover from heavy rains over much of the country in December 2010 and January 2011 that devastated crops and livestock.

A new joint programme is changing the way the Lesotho government and its development partners deliver aid by getting different government departments, UN agencies and civil society organizations working together to help mothers and their families. (..) Previously, that help would have come, if it came at all, from various sources - the local clinic, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), and extension officers from the Ministry of Agriculture.

The Chinese government has donated food worth 500,000 US dollars to the government of Lesotho during a ceremony held in the capital Maseru on Wednesday.(..)WFP Country Director Bhim Udas said Lesotho would continue to need more food for its vulnerable people from countries like China because of the economic threats that include the decline of Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenues, which has had a great impact on Lesotho’s revenue.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has been feeding people in Lesotho since 1965, yet the tiny mountain kingdom is still not much closer to achieving food self-sufficiency. (..) "Something needs to change," said Bhim Udas, WFP Country Director in Lesotho, the only southern African country to harvest less in 2009 - around 86,000 metric tons (mt) of cereals - than in 2008.

Fifteen-year-old Ntsebeng Tlokotsi sighs with relief as she is given 140 dollars. Along with it she receives a bag of maize meal and cooking oil. It is a government handout, and she qualifies for this only because both her parents are dead.(..)Through the World Food Programme commodities such as maize meal, cooking oil and pulses are also provided.

IRIN/PlusNews on Tuesday examined the effect of Lesotho's food crisis on HIV-positive people in the country, many of whom are unable to obtain nutritious food. According to IRIN/PlusNews, Lesotho's food production has suffered in recent years from erratic weather, soil erosion and the burden of HIV/AIDS on the subsistence farming system. HIV-positive people need to consume 10% to 30% more calories than HIV-negative people, and people who take antiretroviral drugs on an empty stomach can feel sicker. In addition, the effectiveness of the medicine can be reduced without proper nutrition, IRIN/PlusNews reports. Matsepiso Lemphane, a nurse clinician at Liphiring Health Center, estimated that 80% of people with HIV at the clinic do not have enough food. A 2008 survey conducted in Lesotho's urban areas by the World Food Program found that 30.2% of urban households in Mohale's Hoek were highly food insecure.

Article Tools Print Discuss Urban families in Lesotho, a small landlocked southern African country, are struggling to cope with rising food prices, according to a recent survey. Practically every household interviewed in a vulnerability assessment reported being affected by escalating food costs; more than half of urban households admitted borrowing food to get by, and more than 40 percent said they had been forced to cut down on meals. [...] "Food security is a chronic problem in Lesotho, but high food prices have hit people living in the peri-urban areas particularly hard," said Bhim Udas, country representative of the World Food Programme (WFP), which was involved in the survey. "Most of the people with low incomes spend 75 to 80 percent of their money only to buy food."