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	Food shortages in Afghanistan by Integrated Regional Information Networks   August 2011 (IRIN)   Ongoing drought in northern, northeastern and western Afghanistan is likely to push 1.5-2 million more people into food insecurity this autumn, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). This is in addition to the seven million country-wide already facing food shortages.   The Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL) is reporting a failure of the rain-fed wheat crop, which accounts for about 55 percent of the total domestic wheat yield.   Irrigated wheat, which tends to yield more per hectare, has also been affected by the drought. The average wheat yield (without fertilizers) on irrigated land is about 2.7 tons per hectare (3.5 tons with fertilizer), versus only 1.1 tons on rain-fed land, according to MAIL.   In a normal year Afghanistan produces 4.5 million tons of wheat and around one million tons are imported. The shortfall of 1.9 million tons of wheat this year means more will either have to be imported or secured from other sources.   "Satellite derived rainfall estimates indicate that most of Afghanistan had an untimely and inadequate rain and snow season this year. As a result, there will be heavy losses in rain-fed wheat crops, underperforming irrigated wheat crops, poor pasture conditions, and low income earning opportunities in northern Afghanistan and the central highlands this year," said the US Agency for International Development"s FEWSNET.   Increased need due to the drought comes as WFP is already facing a severe funding shortage for its existing programmes in Afghanistan.   "WFP had originally planned to feed more than seven million Afghans this year, but currently has the resources to reach less than four million," WFP spokesman Assadullah Azhari told IRIN in Kabul. He said additional funds would be required to cover the new drought-related needs.   President Hamid Karzai also expressed concern about the drought at a cabinet meeting on 30 July: "The current drought in certain provinces is hugely damaging to the life of people and their livestock."   Sultan 35, a farmer in Paghman District not far from Kabul, has been trying to truck in water for his wheat crop from a water source more than 10km from his village.   "All the water sources including the underground water have dried up in my village and now I need to pay a tanker to bring me water," he told IRIN in Kabul. "I feel so sad. After two months my wheat is still only 20cm tall."   He said that if he had had sufficient water for irrigation, his wheat crop would have been almost ready for harvest now. Even with expensive trucked-in water he would only get 20 percent of his normal crop, he added.   According to MAIL officials, assessments are under way in drought-affected areas of the north, northeast, the west and the central highlands to determine exactly how many people will require food assistance and for how long.   Much of the looming wheat shortfall will be covered by government reserves and commercial imports. But additional humanitarian assistance may be required to support an estimated 1.5 to 2 million drought victims, according to WFP.   Karzai called on the ministries of commerce, finance and MAIL to take extra measures, and import wheat from India to try to meet needs.   WFP said the USA had cut its funding of WFP activities in Afghanistan by more than two-thirds since 2009. "But we continue to appeal to donors for the support that will allow us to ensure all those in need of help in the coming months are assisted," said Azhari.   "The areas affected by drought are hard or impossible to reach by road during the winter. So it is critical to get food assistance in place early, before those people are cut off by snowfall," he warned. Visit the related web page
	With more rights, female farmers could help tackle hunger by Alertnet & agencies   September 2011   In the Asia Pacific, almost half of all farmers are women. Yet they control less land and have less access to credit than men, experts said in Bangkok last week.   Such discrimination mean farms controlled by women are less productive than men, sometimes by up to 30 percent, experts said.   But if they were given the same access to resources as men, women farmers in Asia Pacific could help feed the region’s millions of people who go hungry, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Agency (FAO) said in a report.   The region, where agriculture employs around 40 percent of the workforce, is home to two-thirds – or some 578 million – of the world’s hungry and undernourished, FAO figures showed.   “For the region as a whole, about 47, 48 percent of all agricultural workers are female. We also see that for the women who are working, agriculture is the most important sector,” senior FAO economist Terri Raney told TrustLaw.   “In the Asia Pacific region, like much of developing world, women are very important in agriculture and agriculture is very important for women,” she added.   Yet, for all their contribution to subsistence economies and food security, the work of rural women is often unpaid, often not considered to be productive work and often their contribution is not sufficiently reflected in a country"s or farm"s economic accounts.   Women also control less land, and have less access to resources such as fertiliser, pest control measures, mechanical equipment and seed varieties. Even if women control the land, it is often of poorer quality and their tenure is insecure. Women also own fewer working animals needed in farming.   “For many countries in the region, the most significant source of gender inequality is related to agricultural lands in terms of inequality in land ownership and size of cultivated land,” Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO representative for Asia Pacific, told journalists.   For example in Cambodia, female-headed households (where husbands are absent) own about 18 percent of total plots used for agricultural activities, five times less than male-headed households, he said.   Access to credit is another challenge. In Vietnam, latest figures showed 24 percent of female-headed households could access loans compared to 33 percent of male-headed households, FAO said, despite women’s proven track record of repaying loans through microfinance initiatives.   “Microfinance has shown that women can be very good credit risk, that women can be relied on to repay their loans,” Raney said.   “But this is a micro programme. In most countries it’s often not a government programme. It’s operated outside of the government and in some cases despite the government’s laws that restrict women access,” she added.   There is inequality in terms of knowledge and education too, with only 7.5 percent of women in Vietnam receiving agricultural information compared to 23 percent of men.   “Women universally have less access than men. It’s the one thing you can generalise about women in agriculture around the world,” Raney said.   This is partly due to a complex mix of cultural practices and legal inequality which give women less of a voice, she said.   FAO argued in this year’s flagship report, which focuses on women and agriculture, that helping female farmers is not only good for women but also for agricultural development, especially as growing populations raise governments’ concerns about food shortages.   “The gender gap imposes real costs on society in terms of lost agricultural output, food security and economic growth,” said the report.   It said if women farmers – who make up 43 percent of the global agricultural workforce – had the same access to productive resources as men, then yields on their farms would increase by 20–30 percent and up to 150 million people would no longer go hungry.   Such gains would represent just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the social benefits that could come from gender equality in farming, the report said.   “When women control additional income, they spend more of it than men do on food, health, clothing and education for their children,” it said, adding that this in turn spurs better human well-being and economic growth. Visit the related web page
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