(Extract)
RECENT FOOD SECURITY CRISES
The Lesotho vulnerability assessment and analysis (VAA) committee, which coordinates the VAA information system was established in 2001/02 at the height of the southern Africa regional food crisis. This was in order to fill an information need for data on levels, severity, and geographical location of the food insecure. Since then, there have been significant food security crises in Lesotho - in 2002/2003, 2004/2005, and 2007/2008, all of which resulted in emergency food security programs. The VAA estimated the number of food insecure people at almost a million in 2004/2005 consumption period (Figure 7).
Food Assistance Patterns
Food aid represents a relatively small proportion of total availability. In years of poor domestic cereal production, Government’s policy is to bridge the gap that cannot be covered through commercial food imports through food assistance. The management of food aid flows is through the government’s Disaster Management Authority, which also coordinates assessments to determine whether food assistance is needed and also recommends the amounts required.
In January 2006 WFP published a report providing an analytical review of food aid, food production and food markets in Lesotho. If found that in 2004, untargeted food aid flows of 74,000 MT (against a requirement of 43,000 MT) influenced the domestic cereal market negatively and provided a disincentive to production. Since the 2002-2007/08 peak assistance period, general and targeted food distributions have been declining. In recent years, WFP has re-oriented its assistance toward development assistance tools like school feeding and nutritional support.
An additional significant finding of the 2006 WFP study mentioned above was that food markets in Lesotho seemed to function reasonably well, and that food insecurity was more linked to inadequate access (lack of purchasing power) than to unavailability.
