Somalis tend to their maize garden as a soldier keeps watch over them. Photo/FILE
On a hot morning in early March, a dozen or so Somali farmers crowd into a small shelter at the UN base next to Mogadishu Airport.
Flanked by officials from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), they listen quietly through the speeches and the translator, as the sweltering sun battles through the awning above.
The farmers are in Mogadishu to celebrate. After two decades of war, the attendant breakdown in law and order, and persistent drought, they have, for the first time ever, grown and sold maize to WFP.
“Farmers are now producing the food that the poor in Somalia are consuming,” says Luca Alinovi, the FAO officer in charge of the country. “It is a dream come true.”
Some of the maize is lined up in 50kg bags along a prefabricated building in the complex; after the speeches the farmers and the officials stand before the maize for the perfunctory photo-op.
Food has always been political. Peaceful and democratic countries rarely suffer famine. In Somalia, however, food is one of the tools that have been used over more than two decades of instability.
General Farah Aideed, one of the warlords that emerged after the fall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991, confiscated food aid and used it as a tool to rent support and punish rival supporters.
Keeping famine away
A more recent report by the UN found that about 250,000 Somalis, half of them children aged five and below, had died in the 18 months between September 2010 and April 2012 when drought and famine pillaged the country.
This represented 40,000 more deaths than in the Aideed-driven famine in Somalia in 1992.
The deaths, according to the report, were caused by the “combined impact of drought, reduced humanitarian assistance, high food prices and civil strife in the affected regions, and the downstream consequences of the above factors (such as disease epidemics), all in a context of persisting and/or worsening insecurity.”
According to Somali watchers, the international community was slow to respond to that crisis, because Al Shabaab, the militant group that controls large swathes of the country, targeted and hijacked relief food convoys.
In a paper published by the British think-tank Chatham House, Rob Bailey argued that the failure to deliver food aid to those in need during that crisis was “an obvious and inevitable consequence of donor anti-terror strategies designed to prevent the capture of humanitarian aid by the Islamist organisation Al Shabaab, the de facto administration in the famine-affected areas.”
Making Somali farmers self-sufficient is, therefore, key to keeping famine at bay and skirting around the politics of humanitarian relief food.
Under the FAO/WFP initiative, farmers in central Somalia are supported with seed and technical information to grow high-yielding maize varieties, and store the harvest better. The grain is then bought by WFP with money provided by donors, in this case the government of Austria.
“We are creating a market,” says Paolo Toselli who works on the EU food security and agriculture programme in Somalia. “Every farmer needs to know that they can produce and sell, at a good price, what they produce.”
Hagi Shukri Ahmed, the leader of the farmer’s group, said: “This is a historic day; the purchase by WFP sends a message to the world that Somali farmers can produce maize that’s comparable to other East African countries.”
Michele Cervone d’Urso, the EU Ambassador to Somalia, says the pilot project to empower Somali farmers will benefit the entire economy.
It might be a giant leap in painting a picture of possibilities, but it is a small step.
WFP Country Representative Stefano Porretti described the initiative as a “significant achievement” and a “milestone” for WFP’s operations in Somalia but he admits that the prices paid to the farmers for the grain are above market rates and therefore “not sustainable” in the long term.
Small steps
There is also the matter of volume. The 200 metric tonnes that the farmers sold to WFP can feed 40,000 children for a couple of days in Somalia but is a tiny fraction of the two million metric tonnes WFP buys every year.
While sustained supplies of relief food and improved rainfall have reduced the number of Somalis experiencing severe food shortages from a peak of four million in 2011, figures from FAO show that 860,000 Somalis remain at risk and 203,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished.
Local production only meets 40 per cent of Somalia’s grain needs. Somali farmers will have to grow a lot more food before the country can feed itself.
In many ways the programme is a prototype of possibilities; a reminder that a peaceful Somalia can feed itself and cast away the chains of dependence.
The African Union Peacekeeping Mission to Somalia (Amisom) has carved out a slither of sanity in parts of Somalia but real peace remains distant.
A senior Amisom commander tells The EastAfrican that Al Shabaab fighters, under severe attack in their rural strongholds, have been slowly filtering back into Mogadishu where suicide attacks and ambushes are slowly increasing.
At the gate to the enclosure where the event takes place, the driver of our Land Cruiser, weighed down by tonnes of weapons parks the car ready for a quick getaway, to the heart of the UN compound, should the Al Shabaab attack.
This is one of the safest places in Mogadishu but tensions remain high and the risk of an attack by Al Shabaab is ever-present. Journalists are not immune to the fear factor; although the EU invited a couple of media houses, only The EastAfrican made the trip.
Mr Alinovi says the earlier plan was to hold the event in Afgoye, a former Al Shabaab stronghold in southeastern Somalia, but the threat of Al Shabaab put that out of the question.
“We can do very little to fix it, unfortunately,” he adds, almost apologetically.
The programme, which Mr Alinovi says, is “small but extremely important,” is a powerful reminder that turning swords into ploughshares bears fruit.
However the wider reality remains true; food production and security in Somalia remains hostage to the mercy of the elements nature and fighting forces. Farmers with ploughshares remain subordinate to the men with swords.
Source: The East African
