“We can’t avoid droughts, but we can put measures in place to try to prevent them from becoming a famine. We have three months until the next rainy season,” he added.

Graziano da Silva emphasized that FAO will step up its current efforts in the Horn of Africa and highlighted that agriculture is a key factor in establishing peace and stability in the region.

Successful response

According to FSNAU/FEWS NET, adequate rainfall between October and December 2011 coupled with agricultural and humanitarian interventions allowed farmers to produce and buy more food.

As part of its emergency response, FAO distributed seeds and fertilizers to Somali farmers. In the regions of Bay and Shabelle they took advantage of rains and the inputs provided by FAO and other agencies to double their production of maize and sorghum, their highest harvest in years.

FAO also rehabilitated 594 kilometers of irrigation canals and treated 2.6 million livestock at risk of diseases and infections associated with drought.

In the last six months, FAO, UNICEF, WFP and international NGOs have also operated cash-for-work and food-voucher programmes, instead of relying only on food and input handouts. The cash allowed families to buy food locally and remain in their home areas while also stimulating economic recovery and helping rehabilitate local infrastructure for agriculture and herding.

This mix of agricultural and humanitarian interventions has contributed to a significant reduction in local cereal prices in most of the vulnerable areas in the south, improving purchasing power for poor households. In sorghum-producing areas, for example, the amount of cereals that people could buy with one day’s work increased from four to 14 kilograms between July  and December 2011.

Although much increased,  Somalia's last crop was from a secondary harvest which only contributes 10 percent of annual cereal requirements, meaning that stocks will only last into the next planting season starting between April and June. The report also warned that an estimated 325,000 acutely malnourished Somali children remain at risk.

The current crisis continues to affect the whole Horn of Africa region with 9.5 million people in need of emergency assistance in Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, down from 13 million at the height of the crisis.

Renewed commitment

The FAO Director-General also called for a renewed commitment by all stakeholders involved - governments, regional bodies such as the African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the private sector, civil society organizations, humanitarian and development actors, and the peoples of the region themselves. He also committed FAO to working within the framework of existing initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

Accompanied by the Chairman of the Committee on World Food Security, Ambassador Yaya Olaniran, and senior FAO staff members, the Director-General visited the village of Dollow, in the Gedo Region of Somalia to assess the situation first hand and see the work being done by FAO and its partners.

“I had a rare opportunity to meet with Somali farmers and herders in Dollow. I witnessed the impact that we can make in their lives. And, most importantly, I saw what they can do for themselves, if they receive the right support at the right time,” he said.

In 2009-2010, FAO supported 1,500 agricultural households and 35 000 pastoralist households in the Gedo Region to build their resilience. This allowed them to to cope with the recent famine without outside assistance as they could produce and sell their own food.

Meanwhile, seed stocks in the region are all but depleted and high food and fuel prices have placed an additional strain, forcing families to eat fewer meals a day or to sell off livestock.

The food situation in these parts of eastern Kenya, though difficult, is not as dire as in other areas of the country — or in Somalia.

"That is precisely why these types of projects are so crucial right now," said Rugabira. "We provide families with vouchers they can exchange for basic household items or food while at the same time building vital infrastructure to improve their resilience, so they are not completely blindsided each time the rains fail."

Building up farmers' resilience

With nearly $3.6 million in support from Sweden, FAO is working with the local government and development partners to reach out to the most vulnerable — especially the elderly, single mothers and people affected by HIV. 

They are helping farmers terrace at least one acre of their fields to reduce soil erosion and run-off. The work is strenuous — too difficult to do alone. But by working in field school groups, farmers will be able to get their fields prepped in time for the rains, improving their chances of higher yields, especially when planting crops better suited to the dry environment.

Likewise, FAO and its partners are helping farmers construct simple sand dams in nearby riverbeds to capture and retain water for crop and household use. This will slash the hours they usually spend collecting water. 

‘I could never have done this on my own'

Most people in this arid and semi-arid area survive by farming small plots of land and raising livestock — usually a few head of cattle or some goats or sheep.

They depend on the rains to grow cereal crops such as sorghum, millet and, increasingly, maize, as well as grain legumes such as cowpeas, green grams, beans and pigeon peas. However, consecutive years of patchy rainfall mean that farmers here have not had a decent harvest in two — even three — seasons.

During lean periods, poorer farmers often look for work elsewhere, "working on the farms of better-off households because they need money to buy food," said Paul Omanga, FAO crop production officer in Kenya. "They end up neglecting their own farms."

FAO's project, however, is providing farmers with incentives to improve their own plots. It is also teaching them about nutrition and avoiding HIV infection while simultaneously helping them to develop entrepreneurial skills in poultry raising or vegetable growing.

"I could never have done this on my own," said Jane Nzambi, a 43-year-old single mother of five, pointing to a deep trench crisscrossing her fields that will trap and store water for later use. "Without this help, I would still be pushing my wheel barrel to fetch water to sell to others."

Latest data released today by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU), which is managed by FAO in close collaboration with USAID's Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), indicated that famine has spread to Bay region, one of Somalia's most productive areas. Five other regions had previously been declared in a state of famine.

Together with ongoing crises in the rest of the country, the number of Somalis in need of humanitarian assistance has increased from 2.4 million to 4 million in the last eight months, with 3 million of them in the country's south.

Bleak picture

"Though these figures paint a bleak picture for Somalia, there is a window of opportunity for the humanitarian community to stop and reverse this undesirable trend by supporting farmers and herders in addition to other emergency interventions," Luca Alinovi, FAO's Officer in Charge for Somalia, told a press conference in Nairobi.

Bay region is a breadbasket for Somalia, producing over 80 percent of the country's sorghum. Record levels of acute malnutrition have been registered there, with 58 percent of children under five acutely malnourished, and a crude death of more than two deaths per 10 000 per day.

Bay region joins five other areas hit by famine including Bakool agropastoral communities in Lower Shabelle region, the agropastoral areas of Balcad and Cadale districts of Middle Shabelle, the Afgoye corridor IDP settlement, and the Mogadishu IDP community.

Widespread famine

Despite current interventions, projections indicate that famine will become widespread throughout southern Somalia by the end of 2011.

"In the current food security situation, famine conditions are expected to spread to agropastoral populations in Gedo Hiran Middle Shabelle and Juba regions and the riverine populations of Juba and Gedo in the coming four months," said Grainne Moloney, FSNAU's Chief Technical Adviser.

Post-harvest finding showed this year's cereal crop to be the lowest in 17 years. Dwindling stocks of local cereals have sent cereal prices soaring 300 percent over the last year and nearly half a million acutely malnourished children across Somalia require urgent nutritional treatment.

FAO has appealed for $70 million for Somalia to provide agricultural emergency assistance for one million farmers and herders. With increasing access to many parts of southern Somalia, FAO is currently carrying out emergency interventions and is opening two new offices in Mogadishu and Dolo and several suboffices in each region. 

Improved seeds

"We have already embarked on mass production of improved seeds and procured 5 000 tonnes of fertilizer, among other farm inputs, in preparation for the next planting season from October to December," said Alinovi.  FAO's current interventions are benefiting of over one million people in Somalia's most affected regions.

FAO has received confirmed donations of $20 million from the United Nations' Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), the Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF), Australia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and another $21 million in pledges from the European Commission - Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO), the United States of America, Belgium and the World Bank. Talks with other countries are ongoing.

Famine is classified using a tool called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). FSNAU and FEWS NET adhere to the IPC standards when declaring a famine on the basis of at least  three criteria being present: severe lack of food access for 20 percent of the population, acute malnutrition exceeding 30 percent and a Crude Death Rate exceeding two deaths per 10 000 population per day.

The current crisis affects the whole Horn of Africa region including the northern part of Kenya and southern parts of Ethiopia and Djibouti where large areas are classified as being in a state of humanitarian emergency.

• Ensuring that lifesaving food assistance needs are met and that nutrition support is scaled up
• Saving surviving livestock to protect the food security of  pastoralists
• Saving the forthcoming planting season starting in October ensuring that farmers have access to inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation water
• Expanding cash-for-work programmes to allow people to buy food at local markets and prevent the sale of assets

The meeting also stressed the vital importance of supporting actions aimed at addressing the root causes of the problem in the Horn:

• Protecting and restoring degraded land resources
• Improving water management and expanding irrigation (only 1% of the land in the Horn of Africa region is irrigated, versus 7% in Africa and 38% in Asia)
• Improving animal, plant, and range management practices of small scale farmers to make them less vulnerable to hazards and climate variability
• Strengthening community-based animal health services
• Identifying viable and acceptable alternatives to pastoral livelihoods

Support for such activities should be a sustained, multi-year effort and be linked to improvements in basic services including education, health and clean water, participants added.

The meeting recommended continued support for the African Union-sponsored Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which envisions investing more in supporting livelihood resilience in drought prone areas.

From crisis to recovery

The technical meeting was organized by FAO as a follow-up to the Emergency Ministerial-Level Meeting on the Horn of Africa, convened on 25 July 2011 at the request of the French Presidency of the G-20. The event aimed to review both immediate as well as longer-term responses to the crisis. Recommendations generated by the meeting will guide international response efforts and help prepare upcoming advocacy, fundraising and coordination events to support the affected population in the region.

Unfortunately, "slow-onset" humanitarian crises, such as the worsening drought in the Horn in Africa, have not received the same attention, leaving millions of women, men and children vulnerable to devastating hunger and malnutrition.

Rather than waiting for a full-blown, life-threatening disaster, that will cost exponentially more in loss of lives, livelihoods and humanitarian interventions, we must act now to save those already suffering from hunger and malnutrition as we build resiliency and food security in the region.

Unfortunately, we are already behind the curve, having lost a narrow window of opportunity to begin building upon food security gains in the Horn of Africa following several seasons of successful rains and harvests that had reduced the number of hungry people.

Today, countries in the region are confronted with the failure of the short rains in late 2010 and negative trends that threaten the long rainy season in 2011. These conditions have already increased the number of severely food insecure people.

The number of those requiring emergency assistance has grown from 6.3 million in early 2011 to 10 million today - a 40 percent increase - in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda (Karamoja region). The majority of the newly affected people are reported to be in Kenya (1.2 million). In addition, the number of Somali refugees in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia has reached the unprecedented figure of about 517,000 people.

The good news is that we know what to do. In 2010, the humanitarian community created an Action Plan to address the root causes of food insecurity to bring resiliency to a region that has suffered from protracted crises for nearly three decades. This plan calls for a partnership between countries, humanitarian organizations and the development assistance community to link long-term development efforts with humanitarian assistance to build food security. 

It is critical that we build household resilience, protect productive assets, reduce the scale of emergency assistance and put in place measures to avoid a similar crisis when rain inevitably fails in the future.

To ensure that complacency does not drive destiny in this region we therefore call for:

• Emergency and Sustainable Food Assistance - Full funding of emergency requirements to stop the current hunger and malnutrition from accelerating and support of safety net programs, such as school feeding and local purchase and P4P initiatives.
• Small farmer support - Immediate support to national food security plans to ensure that countries support the poorest farmers with essential assistance such as tools, seeds, fertilizers, food-based nutrition and the knowledge needed to boost agricultural production and sustain rural livelihoods.
• Proactive policy and risk reduction and investment - Supporting policies and investments that address core challenges such as climate change adaptation, preparedness and disaster risk reduction and management, rural livelihoods, productive infrastructure, production and marketing, institutions and governance, conflict resolution, pastoralist issues and access to essential health and education.

These efforts need to build upon national and regional frameworks and strategies, especially the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme led by the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Regional organizations will be crucial for mobilizing concerted action against threats to food and nutrition security. The African Union and the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development, in particular, have an important role to play.

We recognize that emergencies in the Horn of Africa will not be stopped tomorrow. But we must seize the opportunity to break the chronic cycle of food insecurity and make sure that this is the last generation to be robbed of a future through the scourge of hunger and malnutrition.

We call on the international community to extend all the necessary political, moral and financial means required to comprehensively address the worsening crisis now affecting the Horn of Africa as we help nations in the region build a food secure destiny.

Jacques Diouf               Josette Sheeran                Barbara Stocking

Director-General           Executive Director             Chief Executive
FAO                               WFP                                  Oxfam GB