There’ll be food insecurity, water scarcity and high prices for livestock products – Hamukale
By Edwin Mbulo in Livingstone
FORMER Southern Province minister Edify Hamukale says there will be food insecurity, inadequate water and high prices for livestock products.
He fears that electricity supply will be affected due to unavailability of rains.
In an interview with The Mast, Dr Hamukale, an agriculture economist, said the current drought which is being experienced in varying magnitudes and severity is affecting 11 SADC countries namely Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, Madagascar, Namibia, Angola, Botswana and Zambia.
“In Zambia, weather reports show that Central, Eastern, Southern and Western provinces in the southern half of the country were the most affected with up to almost one continuous month without rain or any form of precipitation. In some places crops wilted beyond the permanent wilting point and thus won’t recover their green colour and turgor pressure even if rains returned,” he said. “This therefore implies that in the immediate future there will be a major reduction in crop yields leading to human food insecurity, loss of pasture for livestock, inadequate water for humans, domestic animals and wildlife and projected high prices for livestock products such as beef, chickens, milk, eggs, pork and many more due to anticipated high cost of animal feeds.”
Dr Hamukale said the most scaring of all the effects of El Niño and the current drought is its effect on hydro electricity generation capacity in Zambia because of low water levels in Kariba dam and Itezhi-Tezhi.
“The large scale mining and industrial users of electricity are likely to have inadequate power supply and thus further reduce Zambia’s export revenue and corresponding jobs,” he said.
Dr Hamukale however said the salvation to the problem can be split into short term and long term interventions by government.
“The immediate action that I recommend is to conduct an emergency crop forecast and current water situation surveys to establish the expected grain crop production, area planted, water volumes, consumption figures, current food available and identify short term coping strategies by our citizens as government plans for action,” he said. “In short we need to carry out a vulnerability and quantitative needs assessment to establish which districts and how many people will require food aid or relief support. This is the empirical data and information upon which government can declare such districts as disaster areas. The Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit can then activate its stakeholder response network to prepare for action with accurate planning information.”
Dr Hamukale noted that Zambia was not the only affected country.
“And so we need to move in proactively to approach the United Nations World Food Programme, FAO, bilateral donor countries and charities. There is a chance it will rain as such the farming and community level participation needs to engage in water harvesting by trapping the remnant running rain water into reservoirs for our livestock and small-scale crop irrigation. Those farmers near rivers and dambos can be supported with farming inputs and water pumps to start planting irrigated crops even now,” he said. “I also recommend use of solar energy in the likely event of massive load-shedding. We need to make solar energy affordable for domestic consumers especially. Thirdly, I recommend that government secures funds to sink a lot of boreholes in schools, clinics and communities to enhance water supply since surface water in dams and seasonal streams will dry up faster than average.”
Dr Hamukale also raised the need to adjust Zambia’s over dependence on maize as a major source of carbohydrates “and begin to to produce, consume and commercialise drought resistant crops”.
“We need weekly updates on food availability and prices for selected essential food products to support decision making at a higher level,” said Dr Hamukale.- The Mast