JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -- Food shortages will be a recurring problem in Southern African countries as an HIV/AIDS pandemic and Western aid conditions hobble the region's ability to fight drought, aid agencies said on Sunday.

On Friday the World Food Program renewed its July appeal for another $308 million to feed 6.5 million people after a similar appeal to save double that number of people earlier this year.

Greg Ramm, Save the Children's Southern Africa regional director, said pleas for food and finance would happen on an increasingly regular basis.

"We are in a downward spiral. The region as a whole is much more vulnerable to minor shocks than it ever has been before," Ramm told Reuters.

WFP Director Sheila Sisulu said on Thursday some aid agencies failed to see the link between AIDS and hunger, which was an emergency not just a development issue as breadwinners fell ill and died.

"What in 1992 required a major drought to produce this kind of catastrophe now only requires pockets of drought, and yes, it would be an unusual year now when we didn't have problems," Ramm said.

With 22 million sub-Saharan Africans infected with HIV or living with full-blown AIDS, communities had less workers to feed more people, Ramm said, adding that free-market economic policies imposed by the West had exacerbated food insecurity.

"The World Bank, IMF and some Western donors insist that subsidies to agriculture end, which makes it much harder to grow food, or to sell it in the cities.

"The stability has gone and been replaced with the inevitable vulnerabilities and shocks. Some farmers don't know whether to plant, others don't have the money," he said.

The World Bank and IMF argue that state interference in the form of subsidies hampers competitiveness.

But in June they agreed to reverse their opposition to subsidies and minimum crop prices in Zambia and supplied farmers with money for fertilizers and equipment.

WFP regional spokesman Mike Huggins said the HIV/AIDS pandemic eroded poor states' ability to maintain agricultural infrastructure and cope with drought.

"AIDS is having a fundamental effect on the agricultural sector and donors will have to continue to step up and support the region," Huggins said. "At first we didn't realize how HIV/AIDS was impacting and eating away at society in Southern Africa. It will require constant and continual global support."

The WFP, which fed 72 million people in 82 countries last year, said international donors had provided less than a quarter of the money needed for the last drought, putting tens of thousands of people at risk of starvation next year.

The WFP said it needed funds to feed people in Zambia Swaziland, Lesotho and Malawi.