HUNGER LOOMS OVER LUAPULA, NORTHERN AND MUCHINGA
By Dr. Fred M’membe, President of the Socialist Party
A very, very dark cloud of hunger hangs over the heads of our people in Luapula, Northern and Muchinga provinces. A disease – brown streak – is destroying their crops of cassava, leaving them helpless and very vulnerable to hunger.
Brown streak is a disease that affects the cassava crop which was first detected in Luapula and Northern provinces in 2017.
Cassava Brown Streak Disease (CBSD) is really going to pose major challenge to food security in these provinces. This disease destroys both the leaves and roots of cassava. This affects both the leaves used as a vegetable (katapa) and the roots used for mealie meal (to cook nshima).
Cassava is the second most economically important crop in Zambia after maize and is widely grown in Luapula, Northern, Muchinga, North-Western and Western provinces and in parts of Lusaka and Central provinces. And not less than 30 per cent of our population depend on cassava as a staple crop and as a source of income.
The first incidences of this disease were reported in the northern districts of Chienge (Luapula Province) and Kaputa (Northern Province) more than five years ago but very little, if not nothing, has been to curb its spread.
With the changes in climate which have affected a lot of cereal crops, cassava is a crop to fall back on because it is drought resistant and is able to withstand floods. Hence the outbreak of CSBD should be handled with the seriousness it deserves.
We have certainly not handled this disease tenaciously like we should handle all serious crop diseases. With the poor fertiliser distribution for maize cultivation this year, families in Luapula, Northern and Muchinga provinces are going to have very serious food shortages this coming year.
Luapula, with poverty levels of 81.1 per cent, is the second poorest province of our country. What is going to be the situation of this already very poor people with this big cassava crop failure? Increased inadequate nutrition is going to lead to higher and higher child mortality. In fact, nearly half of all deaths of children under five in Luapula are attributable to undernutrition. More and more children are going to suffer from wasting, the most life-threatening form of malnutrition. The situation is not different in Northern and Muchinga provinces where the poverty levels are 79.7 per cent and 69.3 per cent respectively.
We are therefore calling for early coordinated, collective action to address this looming, in most cases already arrived, food and nutrition crisis in Luapula, Northern and Muchinga provinces. Emergency measures are urgently needed to pull our people in these provinces back from the brink, and longer-term action is crucial to create more sustainable agri-food systems.
And breading cassava varieties conferring resistance to CBDS is the best option to curtail the spread of the disease and increase food security in these provinces.