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Africa continues to be the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic, with two-thirds of the world HIV-infected
people living in Africa, and over half of these in
rural areas. In 2003, an estimated 3 million people
became newly infected and 2.2 million died (75%of
the three million AIDS deaths globally that year),
most of them young breadwinners (UNAIDS 2004
statistics). In southern Africa all seven countries
have prevalence rates above 17%with Botswana (where
one in three adults is infected) and Swaziland
having prevalence above 35%. Because of its long
incubation, the full impact of AIDS may still lie
ahead. According to the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations Food (FAO), AIDS has already killed
around 7 million agricultural workers since 1985 in
the 25 worst-hit African countries, and by 2020, FAO
estimates, Namibia could lose up to 26 percent of
its agricultural labour force to HIV/AIDS, Zimbabwe
23 percent, Mozambique and South Africa 20 percent,
and Malawi 14 percent. Food consumption has been
found to drop by 40% in households affected by
HIV/AIDS. "The majority of African countries
worst-hit by HIV/AIDS are those heavily reliant on
agriculture", the UNAIDS Executive Director
highlighted. "Hunger and poverty, aggravated by
HIV/AIDS, create a vicious spiral," the FAO
Director-General conveyed. The impact of HIV/AIDS
however, goes well beyond health costs and losses of
skilled labour; its impact is having a devastating
effect on food security, as many hundreds of
thousands of people in rural areas have become
infected and too ill to work. Then, as generations
die prematurely, they have no time or opportunity to
pass on indigenous knowledge and experience of
cultivating crops, collecting wild plants and
preparing and using them as food or medicines.
Indigenous knowledge and biodiversity are very
significant within rural communities, and may be
increasingly important as tangible assets when other
resources dwindle. "Innovation often dies with the
farmers," an FAO HIV/AIDS expert comments. "With the
death of parents, the transfer of knowledge about
seeds and cropping patterns is lost. We realise that
HIV/AIDS, along with natural disasters, is not only
one of the major factors causing food insecurity, it
is also a consequence of food and nutrition
insecurity," a member of the FAO HIV/AIDS and Food
Security Population and Development Service told
IRIN.
A downward spiral of the family's welfare begins
when the first adult falls ill. There is increased
spending for health care and decreased productivity.
As more adults are affected, food production and
income drop dramatically. Where farmers and their
families fall sick, they cultivate less land and
shift to less labour-intensive and less nutritious
crops, agricultural productivity decreases and
hunger and malnutrition are on the rise. Many
children are losing their parents before learning
how to farm, to prepare food and to fend for
themselves, thus agriculture as a livelihood may be
abandoned, but no new alternatives are being created
in context of orphans. Agricultural institutions
urgently need to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic,
which continues to ravage many rural areas in
developing countries, jeopardising the human right
to food of millions of people, according to the
recent released FAO and the Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) report, entitled
"Addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS on ministries of
agriculture: focus on eastern and southern Africa.”
The report highlights the effects the HIV/AIDS
pandemic is having on subsistence agriculture across
southern and eastern Africa, impoverishing
agricultural households and potentially cutting off
the transfer of vital know-know about traditional
crops from generation to generation. The warning
based on a major new study of subsistence
agriculture in Mozambique, documenting the loss of
many varieties of grains, tubers, legumes and
vegetables due to HIV/AIDS, flood and drought,
threatening the southern African nation with
long-term agricultural decline and consequent
ominous implications for its food supply. "This
study documents an alarming trend affecting millions
of the poorest rural households," an FAO AIDS expert
reported. "The problem affects not only Mozambique
but also countries across southern and eastern
Africa, where HIV/AIDS is just as big a problem."
The study shows that 45 per cent of respondents from
HIV/AIDS-affected households said they had reduced
the area under cultivation and 60 per cent said they
had cut back on the number of crops grown. The study
author Anne Waterhouse, noted that the results
showed that HIV/AIDS is likely to have a "highly
negative" impact on local knowledge of seeds since
it will impeded the passing of farming know-how
about traditional crops from generation to
generation as infected adults slowly become
incapacitated and stop planting many varieties of
crops. It is important not to lose traditional crop
varieties, which act as an insurance policy against
hunger because they are adapted to local conditions
and will produce a minimal harvest even during
Africa's recurrent droughts, FAO conveyed. The
report further emphasises the impact of HIV/AIDS on
ministries and the important role they must play to
address the existing food security challenges.
The impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on poor rural
populations are many and intertwined. Decreased
agricultural productivity means less food on the
table, unless there is an alternative source of
income. Until recently, HIV/AIDS was considered
mainly as a health issue, and all the programmes for
combating the epidemic were based on health and
medical sciences. However, views are changing fast.
The HIV epidemic is now being considered as an
important cross-sectoral developmental issue bearing
far reaching implications for policies and
programming, both for the governments and
international development agencies. The loss of
breadwinners due to the epidemic is leading to
increased poverty and food insecurity among affected
families in sub-Saharan Africa. Both subsistence and
commercial agriculture have been affected by AIDS
significantly in the way of decline in crop yields,
increase in pests and diseases, and decline in the
variety of crops grown in case of subsistence
farming. Major financial and social crises have been
created in the agro-industry due to protracted
morbidity and mortality and loss of skilled and
experienced labour. According to FAO, approximately
two person-years of labour have been lost by the
time an individual dies of AIDS, due to his or her
weakening and the time others spend giving care. The
demand for agricultural knowledge is increasing, but
changing, while at the same time capacity of
classical forms of agricultural extensions are being
ended. In response the FAO has developed several
initiatives not only to remedy the loss of
inter-generational knowledge of seeds and cropping
patterns but also to provide nutritional support to
rural families. FAO, in
collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP),
is developing Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools (JFFLS)
in some African countries, including Mozambique and
Zimbabwe. Orphans and vulnerable children in the age
group 12 to 17 years receive about a year's training
in the JFFLS in modern and traditional agricultural
techniques. The children are also provided with
meals. With the loss of manpower and rising health
expenditure as a result of HIV/AIDS, farming
communities have begun adopting less labour-intensive
cropping patterns, and planting improved seed
varieties that require less labour for weeding,
FAO's Regional Emergency Coordinator for Southern
Africa pointed out. FAO is looking at labour
requirements for domestic task (water, firewood
collection, food processing), because the demand may
increase when caring for a chronically ill person.
FAO is also currently formulating pilot projects
that will help test labour-saving techniques and
low-input agriculture in African and Asian
communities where a large portion of agricultural
workers have died due to AIDS. FAO further has a
family greenhouse initiative in Lesotho, alleviating
household food insecurity in the impoverished
country. Nutrition rehabilitation units set up in
Malawi in public health centres teach mothers basic
agricultural skills, while their children receive
treatment. |
