The food crisis in Asia: a humanitarian overview

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In Afghanistan inflation has reached 17%, mostly on the basis offood price rises. Wheat is the staple, and the country is a netimporter. According to the USDA, Afghanistan’s balance ofpayments will worsen dramatically as their food import bill becomessignificantly more expensive. Pakistan, which banned wheat exportsdue to domestic price hikes and shortages last winter, is itsprinciple supplier. The country has no strategic grin reserves, andhas been advised not to create reserves as this will compete withconsumers. The winter emergency this year magnified existing foodinsecurity. Despite ample snowfall this winter, FEWS reports thatreservoirs are low and irrigation water could be scarce this year,limiting domestic wheat production. Bangladesh
Growing food insecurity in Bangladesh may reach crisis levels soon,particularly in flood and Sidr affected areas. Successive ricecrops were damaged by the floods of 2007, and then by cyclone Sidr,which struck as the main rice crop was almost ready for harvest. AWFP-sponsored Emergency Food Security Assessment in the Sidraffected areas reported the prevalence of moderate malnutrition at14.6%, while the prevalence of severe malnutrition was found to be6.9%, providing an overall figure of 21.5%, above theinternationally accepted emergency level of 15% (for combinedprevalence). The country’s Caretaker Government has beennegotiating for imports from surrounding countries to replenishnational stocks, which are severely depleted, but lacks capacityfor this. As in Afghanistan, the USDA predicts that price increaseswill result in a worsening of their balance of payments by morethan 1% of their GDP. Cambodia
Over the past year inflation has spiked to 10.8%, compared with 2.8% at the end of 2006, driving up the cost of food and other staplegoods and pushing the most vulnerable deeper into poverty.“About 8.5 percentage points of December's inflation rate of10.8% was accounted for by food price inflation," said theInternational Monetary Fund's Cambodia representative John Nelms.For as many as 2.6 million people living in extreme poverty, thesituation has been worsening over the last several years, whichhave been marked by poor harvests brought on by natural disasterssuch as flood or drought. "Our school-feeding programs inCambodia have been effectively suspended," Thomas Keusters,the head of WFP operations in Cambodia, told IRIN."Effectively there will be no school-feeding program for therest of the academic year, affecting 450,000 children in grades oneto six."