What is a Food Policy?
Twaatera embunda!
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Subject: ugnet_: What is Our Food Policy?
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 18:54:46 EST
What is Our Food Policy?
The Monitor (Kampala)
EDITORIAL
February 24, 2003
Posted to the web February 24, 2003
Kampala
People are dying quietly in Karamoja. Famine and drought are ravaging their
land. A recent BBC report says skulls of those who have starved to death are
beginning to litter the plains of this land.
To the east of Karamoja, you have the Acholi region where the disruption of
socio-economic life by years of insurgency has left one million people on the
verge of starvation.
By itself, the World Food Programme (WFP) cannot roll back the imminent
tragedy. And this is why it is heartening to learn that the government has
promised to give the WFP Shs 1 billion over four months to help contain the
situation.
Let us, however, remember that help for the Acholi living in the internally
displaced people's (IDP) camps is coming only after relief agencies have
shouted themselves hoarse. The help coming their way has not been the result
of a proactive food security policy but a knee-jerk reaction to political
pressure.
In Karamoja, the local politicians continue to talk about the grave situation
facing their people. Church-affiliated relief agencies have also sounded the
alarm. Government is thus very much aware of the death by starvation that is
unraveling in the region, but we do not see any serious programme to counter
the problem. In fact, foreign envoys seem to be taking the initiative in
appealing for relief aid.
Karamoja is also caught up in what could be one of the worst inter-clan
fighting in recent times as the Dodoth and Jie work to eliminate each other.
The Pokot are equally wreaking havoc, rustling emaciated cattle and killing
their defenceless owners.
The apparent lack of a clear food security policy in places where insecurity
combines with the vagaries of nature to make farming impossible is,
unfortunately, too obvious.
Yet government can surely buy food from parts of the country where farmers
are selling produce to unscrupulous traders at criminally low prices and
stock it for times like this.
Uganda is by no means incapable of feeding its population. What we need is
some coherence in the food security policy, so we can be spared the indignity
of begging for even the most basic needs of our people.
