Food scarcity seen since Aug.

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 22

Food scarcity seen since Aug.

IT HAS happened again. They are walking in their weary thousands over the vertiginous mountains of northern Ethiopia to towns and roads in search of food. The land lies under a shroud of dust; the crops have shrivelled beneath a rain- . less sky. Between 1984 and 1985, famine killed a million peasants. Now Ethiopia is again crippled by a drought that already threatens to kill perhaps hundreds of thousands more. This time there are differences. The last crisis burst unex- i pectedly on the world’s con-< science. This one’s inexorable '? approach has been planned for " r by relief agencies since August, when Ethiopian officials said that 950,000 tons of emergency food would be needed to keep peasant farmers alive until the next big harvest in October 1988.

Last time the drought appeared in patches throughout the country. This year it is concentrated in three provinces: Eritrea, eastern Tigre and northern and eastern Wello. In these heavily populated areas virtually the whole crop has failed. In 1984 farming families threatened by the famine had some reserves of grain ..which they ate. before waiking, ;emacE ated? aiiitl' ? dyitig/’ tdwßdS W distant towns. with this memory still sharp they are now making the two-and-three-day treks,to food, dis.J tri but ion,' centres; early, while they; have the strength to do so. At the two main relief centres at Adigrat and Makale in Tigre, the hardest-hit of the provinces, farmers have been given a month's supply of food to take home. ■ Until last month, the relief

agencies expected to cope better with this year’s famine. Early warning, and a legacy of trucks and storehouses from the last crisis, meant there was a chance to avoid widespread deaths and migrations. It was decided this time to stockpile food for distribution from rural centres, instead of creating'expensive feed- . ? ing camps forthe desperate. £■, Things might never have/ worked out as' smoothly .asi: ttiat At the end of Octbber, however,? hopes were abruptly shattered ' when guerrillas from 'Jhe, Erl- d trean People’s Liberatioii Front , \ mounted/sab: unprecedented atife tack on a U.N. food convoy south • of Asmara. Similar attacks this month have disrupted the movement of relief trucks. About 17,000 tons of food a month must reach Tigre to feed up to half a million faminethreatened people. The pro-

vince’s distribution centres now contain less than two waeks’ supply of food, and rations are being cut. U.N. aid officials think that the Ethiopians have underestimated the amount of extra foo.d the country will need. On November 13 the Government’s relief and rehabilitation commissioner, Mr Berhanu Jembere, raised his request from donors to over 1 million tons of food to help feed more than 5 million people over . the coming year. Some 230,000 tons have already arrived. &;In theory, Ethiopia now has '■ enough food to keep its people, fed until March. The difficult job IS getting it out of Government warehouses and into the mouths of the hungry. t The U.N.’s Disaster Relief Organisation in Geneva thinks the only answer is an airlift, which it expects to cost well over $2O

million. The organisation reckons it needs at least three Hercules, transport aircraft;for a year. Its transport fund contains at, present only $2 million, enough \|o run one for a montfi. Harassed aid workers say similar problems exist on me ground. One charity, Band Aid, has sonated 20 trucks to the U.N; effort; the Catholic Relief Ser-’ vices another 14.; But theXrellef agencies want at least 300 more. Ethiopia’s ability•• to * make things worse for? itself has not diminished. During the previous famine, Western charities galvanised by televisionps»res of the starving;' -- h*"... The conscience of the? West could be stirred again. But a dozen Western journalists spent last week fretting in’ hotels in Addis Ababa, waiting for. security officials to lift a blanket ban on travel to the famine areas. f. Copyright — The Economist