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Ambassador Martinez Emphasizes Need For Market-Based Rural Economic Development, Reducing Need For Food Relief

Choma
March 1, 2006

U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Carmen Martinez has called for emphasis on crop diversification to ensure lasting food security in Southern Province. She said on Wednesday, March 1st when she toured Masopo area in Choma District. Ambassador Martinez inspected food relief and agricultural development activities funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Consortium for Southern Africa Food Emergency (C-SAFE), comprising several international NGOs.

Ambassador Martinez noted that vulnerability to food insecurity in this area is partly caused by over-reliance on a single crop, maize, which is known to be drought-intolerant. She said that the U.S. supports a more market-based, export-oriented approach, including drought-tolerant food and cash crops, such as sorghum, cassava and cotton.

Ambassador Martinez also recognized that disease has decimated livestock in this area in the past decade, and that the loss of livestock as an asset is devastating to households whose crops fail. More emphasis should be put on disease control and restocking of the livestock herd, to significantly improve household food and income security in this area. Dairy development efforts by the Land-O-Lakes Foundation in Southern Province, supported by USAID programs, contribute to these efforts.

The American Ambassador expressed concern about the current lack of active nutritional monitoring in rural areas to detect moderate to severe malnutrition, and to refer cases for timely treatment. For this reason, the U.S. is supporting efforts, through a USAID emergency grant administered by the NGO CARE, to increase monitoring for malnutrition, especially among infants and children in rural areas.



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Ambassador Martinez emphasized that the goal of C-SAFE and the additional CARE/USAID-funded interventions is to enable vulnerable households to “graduate” from assistance and become economically viable, not to create dependence. Current and future U.S. government support will emphasize sustainable rural economic development, thus minimizing food insecurity and reducing the need for future US food relief activities.

Masopo area, which was hard hit by the drought last year, consists of 12 villages with a total population of 3,144, representing 530 households. Of this number, approximately 15% have been identified as vulnerable, and are receiving U.S. assistance. Assistance will continue until the April harvest, after which local farmers are expected to be able to meet most of their needs from their own farm outputs.

The main sources of livelihoods for most farmers in this area are rain-fed agriculture and livestock rearing, both of which depend on adequate water supply. A reliable water supply is a challenge in Southern Province, which is prone to cyclical drought. Masopo has 7 boreholes and 11 open wells which provide inadequate water supplies in most years.

World Vision, a U.S. NGO, and one of three partners in C-SAFE, has been active in the Masopo area since 2003. WV, through C-SAFE, currently reaches beneficiaries with two types of food aid: 1) “Targeted Food Assistance” (TFA), directed at vulnerable groups who are not able bodied or have limited labor capacity such as orphans, widows, and the chronically ill, many of whom are people living with HIV/AIDS; and 2) “Food For Assets” (FFA) programs that target able-bodied vulnerable groups that receive a food ration in exchange for their labor on community work projects.

In recent months, existing C-SAFE beneficiaries from Masopo were linked with the USAID/CARE-supported Land O’Lakes (LOL) dairy program. LOL works to improve livelihood options through increasing dairy (milk) production, which improves child nutrition and yields a small but reliable daily cash income to poor farmers. The new dairy program is part of the additional $1 million emergency grant program for enhancing agricultural productivity among current and former C-SAFE beneficiaries. The funding is supporting improved water management and irrigation, vegetable production, and dairy development. In addition, the additional resources also support nutritional monitoring to identify malnourished children for referral to local health centers.



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