WFP Warns of Worsening Food Crisis in Afghanistan
An agriculture survey in 24 Afghan provinces by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), released on Wednesday, said almost a third of the farmers it surveyed intended to plant less than half of the land they normally sow.
"The grim prospects for the harvest this year could lead to a worse humanitarian situation than last year," Gerard Van Dijk, WFP Afghanistan country director, told a news conference.
UN officials have already warned of a deepening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people are on the move, leaving their farms and villages to find food and shelter in larger towns.
The smaller number of farmers to plant crops would also likely add to the food crisis.
Aid workers say lack of employment, economic ruin caused by 21 years of war and a drought, the worst in 30 years, has forced half a million Afghans to become internally displaced, Reuters said.
More than 200,000 have fled to neighboring countries, mostly to Pakistan, which is now refusing to admit any new refugees citing resource constraints to feed and house them.
UN says it would need more funds than it had appealed for to help the rising number of people on the move. Without more aid money, it feared more deaths and epidemics.
Dennis McNamara, special UN coordinator for internal displacement, told a news conference on Tuesday the United Nations would revise its appeal for Afghanistan for 2001 beyond the $250 million it had originally sought.
Dijk said almost half Afghanistan's 21 million people have been affected by the drought and nearly three million were dependent on food aid for survival.
He said it was too early to predict the actual food deficit in Afghanistan this year but the shortfall could be larger than last year's when Afghanistan faced a gap of 2.3 million tons of wheat against their need for 4.1 million tons.