Hurricanes and agriculture: Losses and remedial actions*

Hurricanes cause serious and long-term damage to the Agricultural sectors of Caribbean countries. Bananas and tree crops are defoliated, snapped or uprooted and food crops may be flooded or washed away. Recovery takes time and money as both the production bases and the infrastructure are damaged or destroyed. National economies do not have the resources to expedite recovery without aid. An account is given of the actions taken to estimate losses and prepare rehabilitation plans after Hurricanes David (1979) in Dominica and Allen (1980) in St. Lucia and St. Vincent. The implementation of funding agency-assisted agricultural rehabilitation programmes is also described. Some steps that farmers can take to reduce loss of food are suggested.     

Improving the Efficiency and Cost-effectiveness of Food Aid Grain Delivery

Grain food aid averages 13 million tonnes per year. Donors have a duty to deliver food aid grain in an adequate and acceptable condition at least cost. This paper reviews commodity procurement, packaging, inspection, shipping and storage with regard to overall quality assurance and cost-effectiveness. Experience at ports of loading and discharge and in food aid delivery programmes indicates that sufficient attention is rarely paid to quality assurance and loss minimisation. Grain procurement specifications that are normally appropriate for safe handling and storage in temperate climates, particularly moisture content, are commonly inappropriate for tropical climates. The technology for safe delivery of food aid grain is well established but not always implemented. Procurement of food aid grain in developing countries has increased recently, creating a need to improve operational and management aspects of tendering and quality assurance procedures. Such purchases entail potential cost savings but are associated with lengthening delivery lead times for non-urgent consignments. Although woven polypropylene sacks are cheaper to buy than jute ones, the losses associated with handling and storage problems indicate that jute sacks are preferable for food aid delivery.     

The Role of Food Aid in Drought and Recovery: Oxfam's North Turkana (Kenya) Drought Relief Programme, 1992–94

Regional droughts carry the seeds of catastrophe: the immediate risk is famine; the long-term risk is destitution. Preventing both situations is an appropriate, if not essential, goal for relief agencies. In the past, responses to hunger in Turkana District (north-west Kenya) have taken the form of traditional feeding programmes. A better understanding of the boom/bust cycles in pastoralist systems has, however, produced new relief strategies. A central tenet of these strategies is the acceptance that relief aid should assume two roles: humanitarian—to overcome food deficits—and economic—to overcome 'income' deficits. Arguments in favour of a broader role for food aid are tested with a case study of a drought relief programme in north Turkana between 1992–1994. Field studies confirmed that when food aid is integrated as an asset into household resources, it can strengthen economic recovery. Ultimately, the extent to which relief operations are able to protect both people's lives and their livelihoods is the key to more sustainable development in drought-prone areas.     

The role of socio-economic data in food needs assessment and monitoring

This paper reviews six case studies examined as part of a project to review targetting methodologies employed by non-government organisations in Africa during the 1984-6 food crisis. Most agencies have not yet fully evaluated the role of data in informing policy decisions during their respective emergency programmes. The case studies presented reflect a wide variety of approaches to targetting emergency food aid that are based largely on the use of 'socio-economic' data. The recent emergency relief operations in Africa seem to indicate a change in relief agencies' approaches to the assessment and monitoring of needs of the affected populations. Earlier dependance on nutritional data has given way to an increasing reliance on the use of socio-economic indicators. There was a wide variation in the case studies of the type of indicators collected and utilised in needs assessment and monitoring. There were those who relied almost exclusively on nutritional data to target resources during the 1984-86 African crisis, and others whose experiences during that period lead them to attach more weight to socio-economic data. Other agencies appear to have recognised the problems of relying solely on nutritional data to target food aid during their 1984–86 emergency programmes, and thus more or less abandoned classical anthropometric surveys in their needs assessment and monitoring methodologies during this period. Thus nutritional data has a less significant role in the decision making process than previously had been the case.     

Conflict, the Continuum and Chronic Emergencies: A Critical Analysis of the Scope for Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Planning in Sudan

The concept of the ‘relief-to-development continuum’ has been the subject of renewed interest in recent years. Concerned by the rise in relief budgets over the past decade and the absolute fall in development aid resources, support has been growing for the concept of developmental relief. In the context of complex political emergencies, it has been argued further that as effective development aid can reduce vulnerability to the impact of natural hazards, so it might also be used to contribute to a process of conflict prevention. In this way, the concept of the relief-development continuum has become entwined with broader discussions about the contribution of official development assistance to conflict management. Drawing on a Review of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), this paper cautions against uncritical application of the concept of the continuum in complex political emergencies, and of rehabilitation in particular, in the current Sudanese context. It argues that in order to move legitimately from relief aid programming to development aid programming, three fundamental conditions must be in place: first, a minimum level of security, respect for human rights and humanitarian access. Second, empirical evidence from the field needs to demonstrate that the emergency is over. Finally, moving from relief to development aid programming is contingent on donor governments accepting the legitimacy of national governmental structures and of the rebel movements. In other words, for donor governments, moving along the continuum is in significant part determined by foreign policy considerations, not only technical ones. Consideration needs to be given to the actual and perceived legitimation of the different movements that a move to rehabilitation might be seen to imply. The paper argues that none of these conditions had been satisfied in Sudan by mid-1997. Instead of a process of normalisation paving the way to long-term development, the current situation in Sudan is better described as a chronic political emergency. In such a context, uncritical pursuit of developmental strategies may negatively affect the welfare of conflict-affected populations.     

Linking rights and standards: the process of developing "rights-based" minimum standards on food security, nutrition and food aid

This article examines the recent revision of the Sphere Minimum Standards in disaster response relating to food security, nutrition and food aid. It describes how the revision attempted to incorporate the principles of the Humanitarian Charter, as well as relevant human rights principles and values into the Sphere Minimum Standards. The initial aim of the revision was to ensure that the Sphere Minimum Standards better reflected the principles embodied in the Humanitarian Charter. This was later broadened to ensure that key legal standards and principles from human rights and humanitarian law were considered and also incorporated, in part to fill the "protection gap" within the existing standards. In relation to the food security, nutrition and food aid standards, it was agreed by participants in the process that the human right to adequate food and freedom from hunger should be incorporated. In relation to more general principles underlying the Humanitarian Charter, itself drawn largely from human rights and humanitarian law, it was agreed that there was a need to strengthen "protection" elements within the standards and a need to incorporate the basic principles of the right to life with dignity, non-discrimination, impartiality and participation, as well as to explore the relevance of the concept of the progressive realisation of the right to food. The questions raised in linking rights to operational standards required thought, on the one hand, about whether the technical standards reflected a deep understanding of the values expressed within the legal instruments, and whether the existing standards were adequate in relation to those legal rights. On the other hand, it also required reflection on how operational standards like Sphere could give concrete content to human rights, such as the right to food and the right to be free from hunger. However, there remain challenges in examining what a rights-based approach will mean in terms of the role of humanitarian agencies as duty-bearers of rights, given that the primary responsibility rests with state governments. It will also require reflection on the modes and mechanisms of accountability that are brought to bear in ensuring the implementation of the Minimum Standards.     

Rehabilitation: strategic, proactive, flexible, risky?

Rehabilitation after armed conflict is a direct intellectual descendant of thinking about rehabilitation after natural calamity. It is related, generally, to poverty reduction and, operationally, to associated action at the micro level. This history has limited its strategic conceptualisation and, in particular, its links with reconciliation and state re-legitimation and also with macro-economic stabilisation and renewed growth. In post-war--or more generally, a lull in conflict with the potential to become permanent--a country's rapid, focused, prioritised action within a strategic framework is urgent. It is not risk-free for political and natural disasters as well as for those with economic and social bases. Flexibility, learning from initial experience and asking intended household beneficiaries about their needs in advance can reduce risk as can pre-positioning of contingency or standby resources to avert post-war calamities (for example, drought, flood) and catastrophes (renewed violence) from delaying and discrediting rehabilitation efforts.     

Choice and Constraints in Floodplain Occupation: The Influence of Structural Factors on Residential Location in Peninsular Malaysia

In Peninsular Malaysia 'structural' factors are found to influence strongly people's persistent occupation of floodplains. Thus, despite a high level of flood hazard awareness, a high level of pessimism and a high level of expectation of future floods, poorer individuals seldom attempt to leave for more advantageous locations but are instead trapped in their present locations by structural factors such as poverty, low residential and occupational mobility, low educational attainment, traditional land inheritance, government aid, and government disaster preparedness, relief and rehabilitation programmes. These forces exert a strong influence upon individuals and largely control their choice of residential location in response to flood hazards, thereby reinforcing the persistent occupation of floodplains. Structural factors such as lawlessness, rural—urban migration, floodplain encroachment and squatting are also highly influential in leading people to move. Even for those who move, structural factors have largely confined their choice of residential location to urban floodplains.     

Floods and Livestock in Bangladesh

The effects of monsoon floods on livestock in terms of death, loss of livestock feeds, distress sales of livestock and their consequences for livestock owners were assessed using data derived from a survey of 1000 households in nine districts conducted after the 1984 floods. The results show that there were very few deaths due to drowning during the floods but there were large number of deaths after the floods due to disease and hunger caused by loss of animal feeds. Floods contributed to increased distress sales of livestock, land and other assets. Floods worsened the already serious draught power problem making it difficult for many farmers to plant winter crops on time and in adequate quantity, thereby adversely affecting output. In general, floods exacerbated the livestock related problems which are quite serious even under normal conditions. The post-flood relief/rehabilitation programmes included very few of these problems, if at all. In reality, the solution to these problems should be sought within the framework of overall longterm agricultural and livestock development policies and programmes.     

The social context of childcare practices and child malnutrition in Niger's recent food crisis

In 2004–05, Niger suffered a food crisis during which global attention focused on high levels of acute malnutrition among children. In response, decentralised emergency nutrition programmes were introduced into much of southern Niger. Child malnutrition, however, is a chronic problem and its links with food production and household food security are complex. This qualitative, anthropological study investigates pathways by which children are rendered vulnerable in the context of a nutritional 'emergency'. It focuses on household-level decisions that determine resource allocation and childcare practices in order to explain why practices apparently detrimental to children's health persist. Risk aversion, the need to maintain self-identity and status, and constrained decision making result in a failure to invest extra necessary resources ingrowth-faltering children. Understanding and responding to the social context of child malnutrition will help humanitarian workers to integrate their efforts more effectively with longer-term development programmes aimed at improving livelihood security.     

Matching Food Security Analysis to Context: the Experience of the Somalia Food Security Assessment Unit

This case study reviews the experience of the Somalia Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU) of operating a food security information system in the context of a complex emergency¹ In particular, it explores the linkages between selected features of the protracted crisis environment in Somalia and conceptual and operational aspects of food security information work. The paper specifically examines the implications of context characteristics for the establishment and operations of the FSAU field monitoring component and for the interface with information users and their diverse information needs. It also analyses the scope for linking food security and nutrition analysis and looks at the role of conflict and gender analysis in food security assessment work. Background data on the food security situation in Somalia and an overview of some key features of the FSAU set the scene for the case study. The paper is targeted at those involved in designing, operating and funding food security information activities.     

Looking beyond food aid to livelihoods, protection and partnerships: strategies for WFP in the Darfur states

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur remains extremely serious. The optimism that followed the signing of the Abuja Peace Accord was followed by a rapid deterioration in security on the ground in part associated with increasing factionalism in various rebel movements. This paper briefly reviews the evolution of the crisis, its impact on lives and livelihoods and the response by the World Food Programme (WFP) to June 2006. The major challenges and issues facing the food aid programme in the previous 18 months included: dealing with insecurity while maintaining or even extending programme outreach; the need to link protection with assistance more explicitly; and determining the wider impact of food aid programming on the processes and institutions linked with the conflict. The paper discusses the main strategic issues facing WFP in the future such as: integrating security and protection with needs assessments and operational decisions, broadening response strategies beyond food aid and bringing livelihoods to the fore, the need to review cost-efficiency, promoting partnerships and strengthening national and regional capacities.     

Food Security in Complex Emergencies: Enhancing Food System Resilience

This paper explores linkages between food security and crisis in different contexts, outlining the policy and institutional conditions needed to manage food security during a crisis and to rebuild the resilience of food systems in periods of relative peace. The paper reviews experiences over the past decade of countries in protracted crisis and draws lessons for national and international policy. It assesses the different alternatives on offer in fragile countries to address, for example, the disruption of institutional mechanisms and the decreasing level of support offered by international donors with respect to longer-term expectations. It proposes a Twin Track Approach to enhance food security resilience through specific policies for protracted crises that link immediate hunger relief interventions with a long-term strategy for sustainable growth. Finally, the article analyses policy options and the implications for both short- and longer-term responses vis-à-vis the three dimensions of food security: availability; access; and stability.     

The Prevention and Mitigation of Famine: Policy Lessons from Botswana and Sudan

Botswana and Sudan experienced consecutive years of drought in the 1980s. Sudan faced a large decline in food entitlement and nutritional deterioration, which translated into famine in 1984/85. Botswana, on the other hand, nearly compensated income losses and averted nutritional deterioration and famine-related deaths. There are important lessons to learn from the famine prevention experience of Botswana. Its strategy for dealing with drought and famine combines policies of steady economic growth with supplementary poverty alleviation and drought relief programs. To provide continuity and stabilization of market operations in times of distress, the country channels sufficient food through market chains, provides price support to preempt market collapse and augments the income of consumers through public income transfer programs to prevent demand failure. In addition, it maintains a responsive and accountable political system and a decentralized participatory administrative structure. While Sudan should develop policies that are compatible with its own environment, it is crucial that it recognizes the critical role of public action in promoting growth, alleviating poverty, and providing timely relief responses in times of anticipated growth failure.     

Conflict, camps and coercion: the ongoing livelihoods crisis in Darfur

This paper presents the findings of a study commissioned by World Food Programme (WFP) in early 2006 to enhance understanding of how the conflict in Darfur has affected livelihoods and markets, and of the effects of food aid. The livelihoods of many in Darfur were devastated early on in the conflict, principally through the widespread looting or destruction of assets and highly restricted population movements, which struck at the heart of pre-conflict livelihoods. Livelihood strategies for most people are now restricted, poorly remunerated and often associated with high risk of attack. Patterns of coercion and exploitation have also become entrenched; and markets and trade, the lifeblood of Da fur's economy pre-conflict, severely disrupted. Against this backdrop the impact of food aid on livelihoods in Darfur has been overwhelmingly positive. The paper proposes a number of preconditions for investment in recovery in Darfur, and recommends ways in which livelihoods can be supported in the current context of ongoing conflict.     

Methods of increasing food self-sufficiency following disasters in the commonwealth Caribbean*

In the Caribbean, catastrophic events take their toll on food availability through loss of food crops and livestock, disruption in the channels of distribution and loss of foreign exchange earnings from export crops, which are used to procure imported foodstuffs. Nutritional consequences such as the protein energy malnutrition among children, pregnant and lactating women and hard-working males and females are likely to follow. Choice of crops and livestock systems following disasters should be such as to allow for a rapid rehabilitation of the agricultural production and distribution system to eliminate prolonged dependence on food aid. Opportunities should be provided for balanced meal plans including staples, legumes, vegetables, food from animals, fruits, oils and fats. These issues are addressed in this article.     

The development of aid agency policy on the use of imported biscuits in emergency relief

During 1985 more than 5,000 tonnes of biscuits consisting of twenty-eight different brands were sent to Ethiopia and Sudan for emergency relief feeding. They were freely available to recognized agencies operating feeding programmes. Biscuits were popular with programme supervisors as few resources (fuel, staff and personnel) were required for their preparation and distribution. They were also popular with beneficiaries.
Different aspects of biscuits were examined and characteristics considered important included: nutritional composition, acceptability to beneficiaries, packaging, the biscuit dimensions, shelf-life and accompanying information (nutritional composition, ingredients and guidelines for use).
The results of a field study indicated that biscuits have a limited, but useful, role to play in the early stages of emergency relief. Based on the study, guidelines for both donors and users, on the use of food aid biscuits were developed, which emphasize their joint responsibility in minimizing the misuse of biscuits.     

From food aid to livelihoods support: rethinking the role of WFP in eastern Sudan

Despite more than 20 years of distribution of free emergency food in eastern Sudan (38 years in the case of refugees) Global Acute Malnutrition rates are currently the highest in the country. There has been no real improvement in the chronic livelihoods vulnerability that affects people in the region—particularly pastoralists. Food security must be seen from an informed livelihoods perspective. While food aid may still be required as part of transition, WFP must rethink its assistance strategy and advocate for complementarity in the efforts by development actors working across a range of sectors. Alternative models and interventions focused on the rehabilitation of markets and the development of' cargo nets' for the destitute, including cash transfers, must be developed and tested. Land tenure issues should be given particular attention. Food aid will probably remain an important element in the overall response, but its significance relative to other less developed forms of interventions should be reassessed.     

US Government Natural Disaster Assistance: Historical Analysis and a Proposal for the Future

Governments often provide grants or low-interest loans to disaster victims. Yet these programmes have proven to be quite costly. In addition, questions have been raised about associated behavioural incentives. Conceptually, government disaster insurance programmes should be more efficient, consistent and equitable than ex post facto disaster relief in the form of grants and loans. Yet the performance of government disaster insurance programmes has been mixed, at best. This article reviews the history of US federal natural disaster assistance to individuals and concludes with a recommendation for a new government role in the provision of disaster insurance.