A final summary, as one contribution to the e-debate did not make it to yesterday's summary.

The contributor asked whether it really is accepted that one of the factors behind the major collective policy failure demonstrated in the emergence of the Southern African crisis was the loss of interest in food security on the part of important external stakeholders. He suggested that if that is the case, then a key issue is to ask how can they re-engage with food security in a sustained and constructive way.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in this debate. I hope that you found it constructive and stimulating.

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Today, Wednesday 11th June, was the last day of this discussion and dedicated to emerging issues, questions and review.

We received a question asking, if one the factors behind the recent crisis in southern Africa was due to a loss of interest in the food security question on the part of external stakeholders, how can they re-engage with food security in a sustained and constructive way?

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Is it accepted that one of the factors behind the major collective policy failure demonstrated in the emergence of the Southern African crisis was the loss of interest in food security on the part of important external stakeholders? If so, then a key issue is to ask how can they re-engage with food security in a sustained and constructive way?

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Kate Bird

Today's summary is longer than usual as it covers several days.

Theme: Governance issues and implementation related to food security

Several contributors have mentioned during the e-conference that the questions that we have posed as part of this debate have been complex and are difficult to answer. We realise that they are tricky, but hope that they have been though provoking and interesting.

One contributor made the plea that more attention is given to putting good ideas into practice - rather than diverting all the available energy into conferences and discussions.

Another contributor suggested that smallholders can be a major force in improving both food security and household income if suitable technology is provided - and gives the example of a maize hybrid which doubles the normal output response to nitrogen applications. Research found that some of the nitrogen could be provided by agro-forestry or companion planting etc. So, if smallholders had improved access to inputs, food insecurity could be reduced. Starter packs in Malawi reduced the risk faced by smallholders trying out the new technology, but needed to be in place for 5-10 years to allow farmers to experiment and see the benefits of rotations including legumes. The SP was hijacked by the donors turning it into a safety net for the poorest. This split villages into haves and have nots and the substitution of the seed with another with a lower response to nitrogen damaged the original production objectives of the programme. 'Donor pressure to make the safety net the key focus has seriously compromised the promise of the original long-term productivity program.'

Low state capacity in Lesotho is one of the biggest contributors to the current problem. State capacity through the region is negatively affected by the exit of talented staff attracted to the private and NGO sectors by higher salaries. In many areas NGOs are replacing the state's development initiatives, but these interventions are biased towards higher rainfall and less remote zones. The leakage of staff is likely to continue. So, should more resources go into training and retaining staff or should effort go into supporting the NGO and private sectors? This is occurring at the same time as low staff morale, so the remaining staff are under-productive.

In Lesotho, poor governance is not as much of a problem as elsewhere in the region.

In terms of accountability, civil servants are risk averse, they get little benefit for right action but are penalised for mistakes, so prefer to make no decision (and do nothing) than be identified as the person who made the wrong decision. What indicators are used in evaluation/assessment affect behaviour and therefore impact.

Participatory methods and empowerment have been associated with decentralisation processes. But local elites are powerful and need to be encouraged to benefit the food insecure.

Some comments on the political discourse around food security:
Colonial land distribution (and alienation) in Zimbabwe has contributed to food insecurity. Colonial agricultural development policies focused on white settler populations in terms of ag extension, input and output market support, agricultural investment etc. This has perpetuated poverty in rural areas.

A country that cannot feed its own people in the SADC region loses political respect. Supporting the argument for national food self sufficiency. However, many see national food self sufficiency and household food security as being one and the same thing. 'The only people that tend to insist on a distinction between (household) food security and (national) food self sufficiency are policy advisors and economists!' Household food security of the peasant farmer in Zimbabwe has been traditionally linked to national food self sufficiency as farmers were believed to only sell to the national marketing board when they had fulfilled their subsistence needs. There was little policy innovation to ensure food security for the vulnerable rural and urban poor.

Land reform in Zimbabwe is motivated by a desire to redress the racial imbalance in asset distribution generated under colonialism. The policy punishes white farmers for shifting allegiance from ZANU-PF to the opposition and creates opportunities to reward loyal supporters. Land reform has had a negative impact on levels of production and is seen by the general public in Zimbabwe as being the principle cause of the current food security crisis. The government first tried to blame drought, then American and British inspired trade sanctions for the food shortage. Now it is trying to make land reform appear less damaging than it has been by stimulating production by offering new settlers free inputs (these are commonly sold on the parallel market to provide the household with cash), free livestock, a free tillage service and free longer term farm development loans. These are short term reactive policies which must be replaced by strategies which will ensure the recovery of the agricultural sector and restored national food security.

The Zimbabwean government prefers to deal with 'the food security symptom' rather than address the complex issue of poverty. The Zimbabwean government has run out of ideas in tackling poverty in the context of a rapidly shrinking economy. Land reform is presented, by some, as a policy which will eradicate poverty, but others fear it will entrench it.

One contributor stated that customary law and traditional practice is widely recognised as slowing the transformation of use of agricultural resources.

Given high concentrations of people and poverty in rural areas more effort needs to be put into developing sources of off-farm livelihoods.

Theme: Interlocutors for the food insecure

Zimbabwe does not have any private, public or civic organisations working full time on food security issues. Advocacy for food security rises during famine, then dies away, failing to lobby for changes which will tackle the underlying causes of repeated famines. Mostly there is very little public debate or advocacy around food security issues. Normally food security is not a prominent issue in political discourse. More politically rewarding development programmes are preferred (e.g. construction of new public buildings, land reform, price controls, import restrictions). Self censorship prevents outspoken criticism of the government. 'If I were to form a new civic group or development program I am more likely to shy away from anything that has direct bearing on food to avoid political attention from government which has grown suspicious of anyone unconnected to the ruling party promoting any public debate on the politically charged issue of food.' Activists fear arrest and harassment would follow any public demonstration.

A number of NGOs with food security and poverty programmes and almost every agricultural institution is concerned with food security.They may use the issue to justify inappropriate programmes. The lack of a credible alternative voice on food security issues leaves government free to formulate policy with little opposition or constructive input. This enables them to define food security as narrowly as they wish and to use policies with a negative impact on food security to gain political support.

Zimbabwe's Ministry of Information and Publicity closely manages state owned media, so it publishes stories in line with the government statement that the crisis is caused by drought. Coverage has been limited to positive stories, e.g. Ministers at food distribution centres, and there has been limited discussion of the root causes of the crisis. There has been little mention also of regional and village level inequalities and corruption in the distribution of food aid. The independent press demonises the government but puts little energy into investigative reporting - although there is lots of research material that they could turn to. Good reporting appears to be hampered by a poor understanding of a complex issue.

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Response from SA: South Africa is less dependent on donor aid that some of the other southern African countries, although we also need and welcome assistance and support of that nature. The South African government use donor aid to supplement its available resources, especially in cases where natural disaster or harsh climatical conditions, including droughts, errode available resources for basic needs of people, especially in the area of food security. One of the issues of concern is that some of the aid agencies insist to channel funds directly to NGOs and other development organisations that operate at grassroots level, without first donating it into the state coffers. This is problematic, because all financial resources used by government departments for programmes and projects have to be channelled through National Treasury. This does not only apply for food security, but for all other areas of development.

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Charles Mann

The whole issue of whether or not smallholders can be a major force in improving both food security and raising incomes turns on the availability of a feasible technology that is more productive than smallholders are currently using. In Malawi, Government and International researchers developed improved varieties of maize that roughly doubled the gearing, the ratio, of output to critical input - the ratio of kgs of maize per unit of nitrogen. Traditional varieties yield roughly ten units of maize to one of N. The improved semi-flint hybrids developed in a concerted collaborative research effort yield roughly twenty units of maize per unit of N. Companion research showed how effectively some of that N (and better soil conditioning) could be derived from rotation/intercropping - soy, groundnuts, agroforestry, etc (see Blackie comment). Something like 1700 farmer trials over 5 years both permited regional "best bet" recommendations, and demonstrated widely that the improved seed and cropping combinations worked.

These results made it clear that if smallholders could access the improved inputs, there was no question that smallholder led food security and poverty alleviation was feasible, full stop. It was equally clear that at Malawi's desparate poverty levels and with a disfunctional credit system, few smallholders had cash even to experiment with these improved systems. It was equally clear that without the gearing of hybrids (20/1 replacing 10/1) Malawi could not produce enough food to feed its people. Widespread starvation or massive food aid could be mathematically demonstrated as things stood in the late nineties even though an adequately productive system was available.

Faced with the certainty of large food aid were nothing done on the production side, DFID, EU, and WB responded positively to Government's request for the Starter Pack program. This put small demonstration packs of improved seed (maize and nitrogen fixing legumes), fertilizer, and information into the hands of every small farmer. All could experiment with seed that would generate twice as much maize per unit of N, be it from a bag or from green manures. The essence of the strategy was to get a small bit of this more efficient technology into every farmer's hands quickly - demonstration packs, not the free distribution of seed and fertilizer in quantities that would displace commercial sales. (Norsk Hydro, seller of half of Malawi's fertilizer was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Sarter Pack,) The goal was not just to get a quick burst of production from the new varieties with some fertilizer, but to begin the education and hands-on process of building up sources of organic N via the legumes with the maize. These rotations take several years to become convincing, and for farmers to learn and see results (especially agroforestry), hence the concept of SP for 5 - 10 years, but always as small packs too small to distort commercial purchases.

Alas, this smallholdeer productivity program was hijacked by the donor determination to transform it into a safety net program, targeted to the poorest. This shift in emphasis had several disastrous consequenes for the productivity objectives. First, the resulting haggling delayed distribution past the date for the packs to be effective. Second, it split villages into haves and have nots. Instead of everyone being on the same page in terms of transforming towards a common proven target set of improved practices, the poorest had inputs with which to experiment, the not quite so poor had no improved inputs nor rotation crop seed. The natural leaders who could help the poorest use the inputs effectively instead were bitter that they had none. The targeting proved extremely divisive.

The shift to safely net also muted the focus on productivity. Composite maize with lower gearing (maize/N) was substituted for the hybrids. Thus the poorest were provided with one set of inputs whilst the package recommended to those purchasing inputs remained focused (correctly in my view) on hybrids, with their higher gearing.

Malcolm Blackie has summed it up nicely. The African solution was distorted substantially as filtered through donor lenses - targeting replaced universal coverage smallholder coverage; an untested system was substituted for the proven one.

The smallholders could be the engine of productivity growth in Malawi. In the process of achieving that, safety net objectives are achieved. However, donor pressures to make the safety net the key focus has seriously compromised the promise of the original long-term productivity program.

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John Wyeth

Poor governance is also a problem, but nothing like to the extent or depth as in some other countries.

Although there are notable exceptions to this generalisation: the exodus of high quality manpower to other countries, rapid staff turnover leading to lack of experience among those that remain as well as poor motivation and morale among government servants are serious constraints to the formulation of well thought out policy. These are also problems that it is particularly difficult for donors to help with.

Customary law and traditional practice, especially relating to the use of land, is also a widely recognised brake on the speed with which transformation to optimal use of limited agricultural resources of the country can take place. Efforts to deal with this problem are being made, however.

Finally, there is inadequate policy recognition of the importance of general rural development and how it should fit in with agricultural development. Much more attention is needed on the development of rural off-farm livelihood sources given the limitations in agricultural resources and the concentration of population and poverty in the rural areas.

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1. State capacity: Higher salaries and operational resources continue to attract qualified staff out of government service into a growing private sector and NGO system. This trend seems likely to continue. In many respects, private companies and NGOs are replacing state mediated development initiatives though these investments are biased to higher rainfall zones and those with better trade and communications linkages.

One solution is to train more people on the assumption we need to saturate the private sector before more high quality staff accept public sector positions. This implies larger, long term investments in professional training. It may also be worth re-assessing the returns to investment in public sector manpower how should this be evaluated? How can such returns be improved.

We started building national agricultural research capabilities (esp training staff) in southern Africa 20 years ago, but the lack of collateral national investments have left these institutions virtually as weak as when we started. This raises the question, do we give up in public sector support and concentrate more resources to improving the private sector, or NGO efforts?

Currently, CG Centers provide the main source of germplasm and new varieties for many key crops - including groundnut, srghum, pearl millet. We are asked to move our work upstream. But many NARES in Africa remain as dependent on us for basic varietal development as ever. Do we do this for another 30 years?

2. Accountability: Some years ago one civil servant kindly explained to me that she was better off not making a decision, than making a wrong decision; By implication, the civil servant obtains little benefit from a correct decision, but faces a high cost if the decision goes bad. Therefore, no risk is taken. Someone else is responsible for the problem. Or the raditional solution is offered, or the donor funded proposal is accepted.

Perhaps we need to start with a firmer dialogue on what impacts we are willing to be held accountable for? For most relief programs, it is simply the number of people fed, number who received seed or fertilizer, and perhaps the production level the following season. The problem is, these indicators do not build sustainable local institutions.

Yesterday, I visited primary schools participating in a WFP feeding program. Enrollments were up; attendance is up; the number of girls in the classroom is up; the number of students going to secondary school is up. These were the indicators sought. But the program ends in a couple of years, and no one has any idea what to do next. The common refrain is the government has to decide if the donor supports us it may continue; Which indicators are relevant to whom?

3. Decentralization: There has been substantial effort to promote more participatory work and empowerment during the past 5-10 years. But local elites are just as significant as national elites. These interest groups need to be acknowledged and accounted for. The question remains, how to encourage these interest groups to work or invest to the benefit of the food insecure (in this case). This remains as much a logistical issue of tracking growth linkages as a political issue of democratization.

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1. Are there national/local civil society organizations dedicated to the issue of food security or concerned with food security? In Zimbabwe , I am not aware of any private/public/civic organization dedicated full-time on food security issues. But there are a number of NGOs that have programs on food security and poverty reduction among other things. Almost every agricultural institution is however concerned with food security and often (ab)uses the issue to justify various programs and planned activities

2. To what extent does the relative weakness/strength of civil society affect the way in which food security is prioritized by the regime? The government is often left unchallenged to frame the food security policy and programs due to absence of a credible authority on the matter. Government given the latitude to waver on food security policy and to define it as narrowly as they see fit and sometimes useit to gain political support for policies that negatively contribute to food security

3. To what extent do coping strategies and other informal mechanisms displace more formal mechanisms of advocacy for food security? Advocacy for food security rises during famine and dies away in the absence of famine were the seeds of the next famine are planted! There is generally very limited advocacy on food security matters in most years through formal and informal strategies.

4. To what extent do other problems (related to development) displace advocacy for food security? Under normal circumstances food security often plays second fiddle to other politically visible and more rewarding development programs such as new public buildings, land reform, price controls, import restrictions

5. To what extent is advocacy of food security prevented by authoritarian political practices (censorship, harassment of potential interlocutors, etc.) I think the problem is perhaps more of self censorship than explicit prevention by any regime. I do not think however that the Harare government would be amused if we were to organize a match to publicize the failure of our government to effectively address famine and food security challenges bedeviling the country! It would most likely respond by arresting the organizers for violating the repressive POSSA law and scuttling away participants accusing them of being anti government when they are merely anti-policy status quo. If I were to form a new civic group or development program I am more likely to shy away from anything that has direct bearing on food to avoid political attention from government which has grown suspicious of anyone unconnected to the ruling party promoting any public debate on the politically charged issue of food! This is self censorship and it is endemic in our part of the world.

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One contributor asked a set of questions about improving democratic decision-making around food security policy. Specific questions were:

• how citizens and civil society can be empowered to put food security onto the political agenda?
  
• are there experiences from other countries around the world that would be applicable?
  
• what sort of mechanism could make southern African governments more accountable to the food insecure?

Other, related questions are:

• what practical actions can be taken to empower citizens to demand accountability and policies that will ensure food security?
  
• what practical steps can be taken to improve the aid relationship on the foundation of better national institutions?
  
• what factors explain the differential rate of breaking away from neo- patrimonial democracy in the countries of Southern Africa?

We would be very interested to hear if anyone has responses to these questions.

One contributor pointed out that although governments in the region manage to stay out of the marketing chain for most of the main crops, they seem unable to do so when it comes to maize. The confusion resulting from their failure to manage the 'maize fertiliser nexus' is compounded by the involvement of donors, NGOs, missionaries and UN agencies.

Another contributor suggests a set of categories to help civil society etc. to organise post-crisis responses. They include:

• Relief and rehabilitation measures
  
• Strengthening livelihoods
  
• Capacity building for local management and organisations (e.g. skills training for entrepreneurs and local government officers)
  
• Building civil society to increase the involvement of food insecure communities in policy -making

The political discourse around food security in Zambia is path dependent and its foundations were substantially set in place during the colonial period. The dual economy was established with commercial farms near the line of rail and small subsistence farms on Trust Lands which acted as a labour reserve and produced staple food for urban populations. Political patronage in the immediate post- colonial period, based on a 'munificent state' and subsidised staples was forced to change when structural adjustment policies were introduced. These made the smallholder sector, particularly in remote areas, even more isolated from markets. Farmers close to the line of rail have diversified production (away from maize to higher value crops) while remote farmers have shifted from maize to cassava. Liberalisation may be 'necessary but is not sufficient to reduce poverty and hunger'. The state has shrunk and the private sector has cherry picked the parts of the market that are profitable, leaving service provision (etc.) in other areas up to donor programmes. Political patronage and the maize economy remain enmeshed.

'Agricultural policies are in contradiction to positive nutrition outcomes' and there are unacceptably high levels of stunting of children in Zambia. Could the right to food (including the right to feed oneself and ones family form the basis for civil society, the media and others to advocate for improved food security?

Summaries of Saturday and Sunday's discussions will be combined and produced on Monday 9th June.

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The theme paper suggests that: a) civil society organizations are generally weak and marginalized from the policy process in southern africa b) there are not many organizations promoting the issue of food insecurity except in crisis moments c) food security as a policy issue is not prioritised by southern African governments, except in crisis moments d) southern african governments are not accountable to those who suffer food insecurity and, therefore, they are not sufficiently responsive. Iif the above is true (and maybe it's not!), how can citizens and civil society be empowered to put food security on the policy agenda. are there experiences from other countries of the world that would be applicable? what sort of mechanisms could make southern african governments more accountable to the food insecure?

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One notes that all of these seem to get produced without too much problem, and reach the market place without too much fuss. But as soon as maize enters the equation Government's, throughout SSA, for example, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe seem obliged to mess around at both the production and consumption end of the supply chain.

The consistent lesson is that Governments continually fail to manage the maize fertiliser nexus, and should be systematically working to get out of the business. The kaleidoscope of donor's, NGO's, missionaries and UN agencies with their varying vested interests simply compound the confusion.

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There is a relatively long history of attempts at multi-sectoral research with well-defined policy objectives to provide an empirical basis for development planning for food security and nutrition. (e.g. 1930s-1940s Nyasaland Survey ; 1975 Joy and Payne, Berg, Osgood, Zambia NFNC established 1967 etc). and some lessons are being learned..

The political discourse around food security, a contribution:

In Zambia, the foundations for a dual agricultural economy were laid during the colonial period: State Lands and commercial farming were concentrated along the line of rail, contrasted with subsistence based agriculture on Trust Lands with limited infrastructure and few market links. The role of the rural areas to feed the urban areas with both labour and staple food was seeded.

Post independence (1964), the marketing board NAMBOARD became the principle mechanism by which the state determined the terms on which rural populations interacted with markets. Through its network of regional cooperatives, the state controlled inputs into agricultural production, notably fertiliser and set prices on farmed produce that was shipped to central marketing and storage centres. Input provision and seasonal credit became widely available with an emphasis on maize production. A pan territorial and pan seasonal pricing policy for maize was put in place. The willingness of the NAMBOARD to collect and transport grain from the furthest reaches of the countryside earned UNIP (the governing party) strong support from the peasantry. The monopolistic control exerted over small commodity producer's produce allowed the government to pursue its import substitution industrialisation strategy by providing subsidized staples, including maize meal, cooking oil, salt, milk, matches and soap to urban workers and miners.

The "copper spoon" years, after Independence in 1964, ingrained a belief in a munificent state that would reach and provide to all in perpetuity. Political patronage did bring benefits to the outlying provinces, (or "the outliers") in the post Independence period. However, the macro-economic shocks and stresses of the late 1970s and 1980s reinforced earlier structural contradictions in the economy. During the 1990s with the implementation of the SAP the outliers became more marginalized and isolated with reduced ability to benefit from improved market opportunities.

During the 1990s, it has been shown that the total value of agricultural production in real monetary terms and energy value has remained stable. Within this, the contribution of maize production to the overall value of agricultural production has declined, and there appears to have been a trend to diversify cropping patterns, (in particular an increase in cassava production) and non-agricultural sources of income. However, what might appear to be crop diversification in the provinces close to the line of rail, could be regarded as a reversion to narrower cassava dominated farming systems in the outlying provinces (which have the highest and increasing levels of poverty and chronic malnutrition). It could be argued that the outlying provinces are gaining a certain degree of internal resilience, however on the other hand, the "global market" in which they want to participate, continues to work against them.

Zambia has become one of the most liberal economies in the world, and remains fully committed to liberalisation and market reform. But this policy framework has shown that while liberalisation may be necessary it is not sufficient to reduce poverty and hunger. The implications of this for the right to food security and freedom from malnutrition and its debilitating effects, is in part dependent on whether the private sector has taken up the space vacated by the state subsidised marketing system. The state has retracted from the provision of marketing, extension services, education, health and water provision. Private trading networks are establishing themselves, where it is profitable to do so i.e. where there are sufficient volumes of production, and where transaction costs can be contained. However, the demand for private or market provision of services in the outlying areas is weak. Health services have become dependent on donors and focus on mobile campaigns to provide preventative services such as immunisation, and Vitamin A supplementation without complementary food based and poverty reduction approaches.

Political patronage and the maize economy have become entwined in a web of relationships and actions that continue to act as a constraint on efforts to reduce vulnerability to chronic food insecurity. Examples of the impact of this detrimental relationship include: o Continued government interference in the maize economy has jeopardised diversification into other crops and non-agricultural activities. o Policy vacillation continues to send mixed signals to the private sector. o Failure to adopt fiscal discipline in government budgeting processes, has led to inadequate and disrupted disbursements to key ministries. Failure to devolve authority to decentralised structures has meant that communities do not have control over the resources that are central to their livelihood security.

In the Zambian PRSP, there is an attempt to move the food security debate towards diversification issues, however this approach is targeted at "vulnerable but viable" households and considered as a welfare issue. In the Agricultural Commercialisation Programme, the emphasis is on orientating the small-scale sector towards export crops through the promotion and expansion of out-grower schemes. These will (perhaps) bring some benefits to poor households along the line of rail, however the outlying provinces risk being marginalized further.

Of real concern is the failure to understand the complex aetiology and relationship between food insecurity and malnutrition. This is also compounded by the lack of distinction in the pathways leading to chronic and transitory food insecurity in Zambia. This has led to a situation where agricultural policies are in contradiction to positive nutrition outcomes. A focus on "food (maize) security" has diverted attention and resources away from addressing the unacceptably high levels of stunting among children in the country, and the long-term impact this will have on the Zambian development process. Factors that have contributed to this include: o Inadequate awareness (or no political patronage to gain) among key decision makers of the importance of nutrition in the national development process o Absence of a ratified national food and nutrition policy (currently in its 7th draft). o Inadequate multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration on food and nutritional issues - despite the existence of the National Food and Nutrition Commission since 1967.

So,... the state and its institutions have retracted from the local level, in many areas the private sector has not filled this space as was expected. Is there an institutional vacuum, or what is happening? What is the new institutional landscape in the outlying areas? What institutions (formal and informal) are now important to households and communities? What are the obligations and responsibilities and support that bond households in production and social transactions? How do changing institutional landscapes at the local level provide social protection for the chronically sick, elderly and other vulnerable groups and what are the appropriate forms of support to them?

The right to food and freedom from malnutrition is more than the right to be fed, but, incorporates the right to feed oneself and one's family. Could this be one pillar of a rights based platform for civil society, CBOs, the media, and concerned informal and formal private sector stakeholders to advocate for shared responsibility to address the unacceptable levels of food insecurity and chronic malnutrition in Zambia?

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Today's theme: The political discourse around food security:

In the discussion today there was a reminder that it is not just donors and international NGOs who influence the formation of food security policies and programmes, but also powerful domestic interests in the shape of the industrial lobby (e.g. agribusiness). Their influence can be seen in:

• reluctance of governments to open borders to imports of food, even during famines;
  
• continued emphasis on domestic self sufficiency as a cornerstone for food security, when food can be cheaply produced in other SADC countries, and
  
• subsidies to millers, even though their produce rarely reaches the food insecure

The poor and vulnerable are rarely requested to comment on policies that will affect them, and instead they are designed to benefit powerful interest groups who in turn protect and promote the careers of politicians.

There is a hierarchical set of stakeholders. What is the process by which some are included politically and others excluded? Why do the politically marginalised accept their position? What can be done to empower stakeholder organisations? Why doesn't the electorate (e.g. in Zimbabwe) use its voting power to force government to improve policy, but instead keep re-electing a government which shunts resources away from the poor and towards vested interests? These vested interest groups fund parties and electoral campaigns. 'Good policies don't win elections but good politics do.' And the electorate do not appear to realise the power they have and need to organise themselves into 'unions'. If this is to work, the poor must have good access to good information. They must be informed about the implications of their potential decisions - or they are likely to be manipulated by politicians.

One commentator suggests that the poor might blame themselves for their situation and think that it is 'unAfrican' to expect for help from government.

Donors and governments are linked in systems of political patronage. Donors depend on governments endorsing their programmes. Governments benefit from the presence of donors, as successful programmes reflect well on the ruling party. Donors know that governments are not really interested in resolving food insecurity. Governments know that donors aren't going to achieve their ambitious goals, given their limited successes to date. Some donor staff seem more interested in launching successful careers than ending hunger and poverty.

One contributor highlighted that in Malawi, both President Banda and President Muluzi have emphasised the importance of food security, and suggested that the cause of the current food insecurity are the liberalisation policies which have made inputs unaffordable for poor farmers. The writer says that Malawi lacks the physical and economic infrastructure to benefit from SAP reforms.

Media: the media in Malawi has been helpful in keeping the public informed. People have begun to recognise that there are different views on any issue. But donors and government tend to prefer an 'official' version of events, e.g. when they undermined NGOs - who were sounding the alarm about the food crisis.

NB: still no specific inputs on Mozambique or Zambia - these would be very welcome!

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1. What is the historical significance of food security in the study countries? Is the issue
of food security embedded within an anti-colonial/anti-settler discourse? Is household food security linked to national self-sufficiency in food? Land redistribution? Is regime provision of subsidized food and agricultural inputs part of the discourse of national, state-led modernization? Is food seen as a citizen entitlement to be provided by the regime or as an individual problem, to be solved through individual coping strategies?
(a) Historical significance of food security and relation to anti-colonial discourse:
Historically, war of independence in Zimbabwe has been laced with movement to restore political as well as economic dignity to the indigenous African people. Lyrics of nationalistic war songs extolled that "independent Zimbabwe shall be a country of honey and milk for all". Colonial policies which dispossessed the subsistence-oriented African people of their productive arable land and located peasant population in hostile environment is believed to be a contributing factor to the endemic problems of rural poverty and food insecurity. Discriminatory apartheid styled colonial agricultural development policies which concentrated their efforts in developing and servicing white settler agricultural population (research and extension, input and output market support, agricultural investment and production financing policies in particular) were blamed for perpetuating poverty in rural areas. This explains why at independence Zimbabwe rather than unbundling and retiring colonial agricultural policies adopted a strategy of extending agricultural support policies and programs that existed during post UDI colonial era to peasant agricultural sector as well. Thus it was really the extension to rural area of pre-independence colonial agricultural policy package that was responsible for the productivity growth and food security successes driven by the smallholder peasant sector. I do not believe that food security policy is in any way anti-settler but perhaps anti-discrimination of farmers on the basis of their race at the input and output market places a struggle that Zimbabwe is still waging to this day.

(b) Household Food Security and National Self-Sufficiency: Having listened to government officials speak about food policy, I have realized that the only people that tend to insist on a distinction between food security and food self sufficiency are policy advisors and economists! Policy makers often use the two terms interchangeably and sometimes together for emphasis rather than for completeness of coverage of dimensions of policy interest. Household Food security of the peasant farmer has traditionally been linked to national food self sufficiency and food security goals out of a realization of the 'subsistence first' policy of peasant farmers who normally sell to national marketing board only when they realize a surplus over and above their subsistence requirements. Zimbabwe has always been preoccupied more with national food self sufficiency than with household food security in its policy stance which were traditionally biased towards promotion of food production without much policy innovations being made to ensure food security of vulnerable rural and urban poor. The rise to prominence of smallholder peasant farmers as primary producers of food was much a product of productivity growth in the smallholder sector as it was a result of commercially motivated switch away from maize by white large scale commercial farmers as tobacco and other capital intensive export crops became more lucrative than controlled food crops.

(c) Is food security motive behind state provision of subsidized inputs and Land Reform:
In Zimbabwe the motive behind land reform has never been to ensure food security at household and national levels. Officially land reform is motivated by a desire to redress racial imbalance in land ownership born out of repressive land grab policies of colonial regime that forcibly took land owned by indigenous communities and gave it to white settlers. Unofficially Zimbabwe's land reform program is a politically motivated program aimed to achieve the twin goals of punishing the white settler farmers for shifting alliance from ruling ZANU-PF party (which at independence adopted a 'forgive and forget' policy of reconciliation which primarily was meant to benefit the white settler population) to the newly formed opposition movement and also to reward loyal supporters of the ruling parties especially those from the military, the paramilitary 'liberation war-veterans', the senior civil servants including judges and magistrates and business tycoons. The government has now began to realize the full negative impact of the program on food production and agricultural exports and has started programs to stimulate production on newly resettled farms by providing diverse portfolio of free support services - free agricultural inputs (bulk of which is often sold for easy cash on the parallel input markerts rather than used on recipient's farms), free livestock, free tillage services and free longer term farm development loans (some of which is being siphoned into non agricultural investments). These freebies are reactive short-term policies motivated in part by a national desire to prove to the international community that land reform was a success and partly motivated by domestic pressure on government to restore national pride associated with food self sufficiency and save the people of Zimbabwe the indignity associated with surviving on monthly food hand outs from Europe and America! In the SADC region, no political respect is accorded to any country that cannot feed its own people and this alone is sufficient political pressure on the country's leadership to restore food security at any cost just to remain recognized in the region as a senior statesman within SADC region.

Although food security was the least concern in land reform policy, it is now the primary concern of government's current policy efforts constrained as they are by a rapidly shrinking economy amidst growing international sanctions against provision of development assistance to the country under the present regime. The negative short-run and medium term implications of Zimbabwe's land reform program on food security and agricultural growth is not at all surprising and indeed must have been fully anticipated given the punitive nature of land acquisition process and the overriding political motivation which guided the selection of beneficiaries for resettlement on farms taken over by the government. Granted that land reform is partially irreversible, the question of interest to food security is not about the impact of the land reform on food security and agricultural growth but about the strategies that can be integrated into the program to ensure speedy recovery of the agricultural sector and restoration of national food security.

2. Is food insecurity linked in public discourse to poverty? Is poverty reduction widely regarded to be one of the real aims of the government?
Zimbabwean government has never really taken a comprehensive policy approach to the issue of poverty even though poverty reduction has been part and parcel of the populist policy rhetoric of the revolutionary government since the country gained independence in 1980. The government has been more keen in addressing the food security symptom of poverty than in addressing complex issues of poverty. However land reform is perceived and often presented by its political supporters as "the mother of all policies to end the twin evils of poverty and food insecurity among the indigenous African population'' while its detractors claim it could become the "mother of all policies to entrench poverty and food insecurity in Zimbabwe". Zimbabwean government appears overwhelmed by the myriad of economic, social and political problems it is currently facing that it appears to have run out of brain power to address poverty in the face of a rapidly shrinking national economy which is currently only fully employing 30% of the productive population. The minimum wage policy which was used by government in the past to keep the working class from sliding into poverty has become politically sticky at US$22 per month living the majority 60-80% of the Zimbabwean population below the poverty datum line of US$45 in the face of hyper-inflationary price increases in excess of 260% per annum. Public discourse is presently firmly focused political dimension of the present economic and food security crisis. But the major preoccupation of the people is securing adequate food supplies from the parallel markets just to feed their families.

3. How does the regime represent the food security issue? What do they identify as being the main causes of food insecurity? Is there a tendency to blame outsiders? (Donors, neighboring countries, etc.) or nationals (certain classes/social groups, etc.)
Traditionally food insecurity in Zimbabwe has occurred only as a result of droughts. The current food insecurity is perhaps the first instance in which drought is not the primary cause of famine.Yet policy makers have been trying their best to lay blame on the drought while the public have blamed the absence of any significant farming activities in the newly resettled farms taken over from experienced white commercial farmers and located in part of the country that is traditionally the breadbasket of the nation and which was not severely affected by the 2002 drought. When the drought story lost its political currency, the government controlled media shifted blame to the British and the American governments for causing Zimbabwe's current economic woes by sponsoring sanctions against Zimbabwe. At national level, the opposition party which is accused of being sponsored by the foreign neo colonialists in Britain and America is often singled out as an advocate for international sanctions which have reduced Zimbabwe's ability to self finance food imports in the face of a crippling drought. However these propaganda statements cannot be taken seriously as policy statements as they are often made without much conviction and they are indeed often dismissed even by the most avid supporters of the ruling party. Often South Africa is accused of worsening the Zimbabwean food security crisis by "giving special preference to other regional countries especially Malawi and Zambia in the importation of maize" in apparent reference to the fact that Zimbabwe failed to secure significant stocks of grain imports from RSA as Zimbabwe's neighbors had placed early import orders which exhausted most of the available exports from RSA's privately held stocks.

4. To what degree is the media free to discuss the issue of food security? How different has the media presented the issue compared to the regime?
Both the independent and state-owned media is fairly free to write about food security situation and famine but has not done a good job of it. The state media is constrained by tendency of self-censorship against any insinuation of food security policy wrong-doing and complicity of government for fear of victimization by the government's Ministry of Information and Publicity which closely manages the state owned media. Hence this government owned media has followed the government stance in holding the drought accountable for the food insecurity and has limited its news coverage to description of such events as Ministers officiating at food distribution centers. There has beenlimited attention on the root policy causes of the food shortages. Nor has there been any attention being paid at examining the apparent inequalities and corruption associated with distribution of state acquired food among the provinces and at village level. The independent press has on the other hand occupies itself in demonizing the government for its alleged politically motivated discriminatory practices in the distribution of food among villagers without much investigative coverage. The independent media with all its brevity in writing pieces on political situation and governance issues has had limited coverage of root causes of food insecurity nor historical deterioration in Zimbabwe's food security situation. This is inspite of the volumes and volumes of in-depth analytical research papers that have been compiled at home by private, civic and international organizations working in the country over the past two years. The apparent barrier to good reportage on food security policy matters by our local media is limited understanding of the complex manner in which food security policy issues are often presented laced with terminology that intimidates rather than inform the journalist and the public and sometimes even the trained agriculturalists. Our journalist can benefit tremendously from a cause for journalists on food security and policy issues. Such a training of journalists assigned to the agricultural desk would go a long way in assisting the local media produce better and more in-depth stories on food security and food security policy matters.

It is sad that some journalist only associate food insecurity with headline grabbing incidences of starvation and eating of wild berries for sustenance. These stories have created the unfortunate image that food insecurity exist only when people are dying for lack of food! Indeed the major policy pronouncement on food security made by President Mugabe is that he will ensure that "no one shall die for lack of food". This is a major policy departure from the government's stated food security policy position of ensuring food security (i.e. nutritionally adequate diet for normal, healthy and productive life) for all and at all times.

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In Malawi, it is fair to argue that the issue of food security has always been considered highly in political circles since the country attained independence. Dr. Kamuzu Banda always said in his public addresses that a household must have three things: food, shelter and clothing. President Muluzi has also placed emphasis on food security in his poverty alleviation agenda since his government came to power in 1994. Debate regarding the root cause of food insecurity in Malawi mostly focuses on the role that the Washington Consensus structural adjustment reforms have played in making inputs highly unaffordable by farmers. This is led to low uptake of high yielding technologies leading to declining productivity in the maize based farming systems. This justifies the government's campaigns for the starter pack program (SPA) - the distribution of free inputs to farmers, which later was transformed into the Targeted Inputs Program (TIP), when resources became limited to support a wholesome dis

While it is fashionable to blame all the economic ills on the SAP, given that most of the reforms were based on a standard package of ideological conditions which could not be applicable across the board. However, Malawi agreed to adopt these reforms without the political commitment to put in place a conducive environment within which the reforms could thrive. That explains why real implementation of the reforms started in the early 1990s, almost a decade after the adoption. Today the country lacks both the physical and economic infrastructure to reap the benefits of the reforms. The reforms have actually been put in place in most of the sectors, but are expected to work with the systems and infrastructure of the old regime. The liberalization of the agricultural input and output market for example has weighted heavily against the smallholder farmers because the private sector is not well developed to operate in places where the agricultural parastatal (ADMARC) used to perform the role

The country is currently in the process of developing/revising its food security policy. It is important to articulate these issues in the new policy. Again it has always been argued by researchers that the reliance on maize (in terms of food security) places the country at a great risk since the crop is highly susceptible to weather, especially in a country reliant on rain-fed agriculture. Self-sufficiency in maize has been heralded as a food security measure from pre-colonial times with mixed success. Domestic maize production has been given all the support in terms of research and extension. This needs to be looked at critically especially now that it pays more to open up the economy fully and benefit from trade (both informal and formal). The issue of Malawi's underutilised irrigation potential has been a song well known in most fora including the media. We cannot afford to continue to remain susceptible to weather changes. It all requires government commitment in terms of re-alloc

Any controversy between government and the media in representing issues of food security?

Honestly speaking one of the good attributes in the democratic Malawi is that although elements of controversy between government and the media in the way they represent critical issues, including food security, exist, the media has been quite instrumental in informing the masses. The problem is that sometimes the government and donors do not want to respect what the media writes, instead they would go for the 'official' stand which in most cases has to be politically palatable. However, people have learnt to take a balanced view when there are different viewpoints from the two sides on critical issues such as food security. The recent crisis had instances in which the government and donors undermined early warnings from the NGOs and civil society through the media and other fora.

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On the final point (about ways of increasing the power of the poor): it may be obvious but remember that "empowering" the poor (or anyone else) is not just giving them ways of insisting that they get what they want, (whether through self serving unions or any other way) - it is also making sure they are properly informed about the implications of what they say they want before they use their decision making power.

Politicians are professionals when it comes to informing in such a way as to gain support for their own agendas. Providing more balanced information may lead to a direct information competition (even conflict) with the politicians at a game they may well be much better at playing.

If power is not accompanied by proper understanding of the implications of what they say they want, then the power transferred to the poor may simply be used to give the politicians what they want anyway.

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Q. The politics of patronage and Why peasant farmers and the vulnerable food insecure groups are always at the losing end of the political game?
A number of contributors noted the important role played by a special class of stakeholders such as International donor agencies and some well endowed NGOs in shaping domestic food security policies and programs. One must also add to this list powerful domestic interests such as the industrial lobby dominated by agribusinesses and industry for who tend to wield disproportionate political influence. Engagement of stakeholders with power and influence explains some of the policy decisions that we have observed in our region ranging from reluctance of governments to open -up our borders to allow imports of food even during famines, continued emphasis on domestic self sufficiency as cornerstone for food security when food can be cheaply produced in other SADC countries, subsidy to millers which seldom reach the intended food insecure vulnerable consumers. The limited political engagement of weak, vulnerable interest groups of the poor and the food insecure even in the design of policies and programs meant to benefit them appears deliberate ploy by policy makers to pock belly such social programs with benefits for the powerful interests whose political contributions and influence in government can make or break a politician. For those seeking to make a difference by improving the quality of food security policies attention has to be put on the quality of stakeholder participatory policy formulation process. In particular the following three questions must are perhaps at the core of the matter viz: (a) Why do governments take certain stakeholders more seriously than others in policy making? (b) why do the marginalized stakeholders such as vulnerable majority of peasant farmers (producers of food grains) and the food insecure (primarily the urban poor) seem to accept marginalizing as a political norm? (c) What can be done (by who and using whose resources ) to empower stakeholders organizations to advocate effectively for their interests during policy debates.thus not whether stakeholders are involved in policy formulation understanding these stakeholders are missing, what needs to be done ( by who and at whose cost) to involve them in policy debate?

To understand the mind of the policy makers one must think like a politician. Certain stakeholders are good for something while others are only good for their votes at the ballot box. Post liberation African governments have been very quick to learn that money for financing political campaigns ( and for building personal wealth through connections) is much more important for winning elections than merely helping the poor and the vulnerable with food security. The fact that our unsophisticated rural and urban voters often elect political parties on the basis of historic allegiances and current appearance and posturing rather than substantive issues of ' what the party has done for me lately' has allowed ruling parties to get away with minimal policy effort towards the majority poor.

Here in Zimbabwe, it has always been a puzzle for me that the ruling party ZANU-PF whose support base is primarily among the poor peasant farming population continues to promulgate agricultural and food policies (including the recent land reform) that often adversely impact upon the welfare of their primary constituent - very little land ended up being transferred to the rural poor, maize producer prices tax the peasant farmer and subsidize the urban miller, free agricultural input programs meant for the rural poor but ended up benefiting the resettled soldiers, civil servants and the politically connected. Yet despite the track record of really bad anti-rural welfarist policies of the 1990s, the party maintained an impressive perfect record in rural areas on all national and local elections! Why is such a user -abuser political relationship sustained? Can progressive policies for the vulnerable food insecure be born out of such constellation of political power among the rulers and the voting population?

There is no doubt that post liberation nationalist governments owe their claim to political power to the support they enjoyed from the majority poor in rural and urban populations who sacrificed a lot at the front lines during the liberation struggle and later aided them to victory at the national elections. If would make sense if this group of primarily rural poor and working class urbanites were to enjoy greater political patronage and policy support from the liberation parties in power in Zimbabwe (and RSA, Namibia, Mozambique). Yet the reverse seem to have become the case. Rural and urban poor have increasingly become the victims rather than primary benefactors of the food security and economic policy choices of our governments. It is amazing how quickly these political parties quickly realized how to win an election by securing political support in the form of financial contributions from big businesses and industry lobby groups in exchange for policy favors and using these financial contributions to run well oiled campaigns among the unsophisticated voting majority in rural areas and urban ghettos. Our governments know as much as any other government in any other part of the world that good policies do not win elections but good politics does! The support that they enjoy from the majority poor peasant farmers and rural working class is unfortunately not at all conditional on them receiving favorable food security policy transfers. A new t-shirt or head scarf featuring the head of the party leader and president of the nation plus a good campaign party atmosphere complete with food and beer is enough to win back support. Such lavish campaign bash are only financially feasible with the contributions from industry which readily flow only when government take a pro industry biased policy stance even when address famine and food security.

A colleague who once worked in our Ministry of Lands and Agriculture here in Zimbabwe once said that stakeholders that are powerful, organized and politically connected and articulate have always been engaged either directly or indirectly, openly or discreetly in shaping the direction of national agricultural and food policies - even under the one party state dictatorship of the 1980s and long before donors insisted on stakeholder participation! Now with formal endorsement of stakeholder consultative processes, there is still a hierarchical constellation of stakeholders by their political clout. Politically weak interest groups are often merely consulted as a matter of formality to allow them to air non binding opinions on important policy matters while others are invited as observers but are never expected to make meaningful contributions to the policy debate perhaps because they already know that very little political weight is attached to their opinions. There are even weaker groupings that are honored by invitations to the policy launching ceremony where government informs them of the new policies and what it shall do for them but no pressure is expected from them even when their expected share of benefits are diverted to other interests! The first group of stakeholders are often those of financial means and hence have political clout - development agencies and NGOs and powerful domestic agribusiness lobby groups.The last group often represents the unsophisticated, politically vulnerable peasant farmers and food insecure urban poor who are often the ease prey for calculating special interests and sophisticated rent seeking politicians.

Why is the rural peasant and working class majority so apparently at equilibrium with this level of political abuse?
I do not know. Perhaps they are ignorant about their latent power which they can unleash by demanding accountability from their political leadership. Perhaps it is rational to be ignorant and non caring. Perhaps the politically marginalized and abused are merely behaving in the typical manner expected from those suffering from any form of abuse - ready to deny the abuse and keep holding on to a notion that the abusive ruling party shall turn around and care for them once again as they go a long way back to the days of the liberation struggle. Maybe the poor and the vulnerable food insecure peasant farmers and urban working class blame themselves for their situation and believe that they alone can turn their situation on their own and it would be unAfrican to stoop so low as to expect government to do more to provide the means for them to feed themselves.

How do the international development agencies and famine relief organizations fit into domestic political economy?
They definitely do not appear to be in stackelberg leader-follower nor competitive power relation with the government of the day but appear to be in some form of friendly alliance with government to 'help the poor struggling masses' and perhaps while helping themselves achieve their professional missions! To this effect, resident international aid agencies seem to fit into the same political patronage scheme because their mission depend upon government endorsing their programs. The government benefit from their presence in as far as they undertake some development programs in the poor rural constituents to enable the ruling party to lay claim to some of their successes in the rural constituencies without having to invest any major policy efforts. Because development agencies know that our governments are not that serious about food security or eliminating hunger and famine and our governments also know that these agencies have no real chance of achieving their ambitious goals given their long track record of limited successes in the developing world, the two cannot play a Stackelberg game against each other but both can play leadership follower game against the naive peasant population to achieve their self-serving political and professional goals respectively. Are development agencies really serious about eliminating poverty and achieving food security! Of late I have began to be skeptical as I have seen personnel at these agencies seem to come to African hot spots of poverty and famine only to launch their professional careers rather than end hunger and poverty. In a game theoretic sense, it would appear that ending hunger is not a sub-game perfect equilibrium for these development aid institutions as such an outcome would imply the death of all those institutions!

It would appear therefore that indeed the problem is far more widespread and indeed not limited to our domestic professional politicians in government. Indeed many of us are not innocent bystanders as we too continue to seek economic rents in the name of helping to put more food on the bellies of the poor struggling food insecure peasant African farmers when in effect we are just helping ourselves in no small measures to the food that ought to go into the bellies of the poor!!! Guilty as charged.

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?: To have real meaningful and sustainable impacts on food security policy, development efforts must focus much more seriously in building the political power base of the poor vulnerable food insecure majority population in rural areas and urban area! These efforts must include organizing them into much more powerful, egocentric and unashamedly self-serving unions in which member enter a political pact only to vote into local and national government those political parties that demonstrate through sponsorship and support for policies and programs that are directly impact positively on their welfare. Until then all our efforts would be in vain. Unfortunately in Zimbabwe, the ruling party is already aware that the only way it can lose the national elections is if such transformation is allowed to happen to their rural peasant majority and responded with pre-emptive strikes of their own to protect their turf: no more free contact with rural peasant communities nor political educational programs are allowed without prior approval and sponsorship from the ruling party and the President's Office! Who ever said development and famine alleviation was ever going to be a simple linear process. African politicians seem to be catching up fast on political survival strategies pioneered in Western democracies!

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Today’s theme: The patrimonial state: The discussion today was in fact a continuation of the previous day’s theme – the failure of policy around food security. This is summarised as follows:Some of the problems relating to food insecurity can be identified as being:

• A lack of coordination among agencies responsible for food security
  
• Concentration on politically visible action
  
• Preoccupation with national food self sufficiency (One contributor did not see the focus on national food production as a problem but in fact an essential contributor to resolving food insecurity.)
  
• There is little or no intersectoral coordination amongst government stakeholders and their stakeholders, despite the obvious need for it
• Supply side problems of (a) declining per capita food production; (b) delayed/ controlled food imports, and on the demand side (a) limited or controlled grain distribution networks and (b) inadequate targeting of support for the most needy

Attitudes need to change, including amongst donors and NGOs, who seem to reinforce these problems. Governments and donors take a short term view – of what can be accomplished within the next 5-10 years. Donors and NGOs have a vested interest in ‘hand outs’ of fertilisers, seeds and food – which policy makers often support as politically popular. Farmers, if they are consulted give the ‘right’ answer, that they have no food or seed – despite the fact that they have traditional seed varieties that they continue to plant, and they can buy food if it is there in the shops.
Also the impact of HIV/AIDS on food security has to be taken into very careful consideration.
One contributor suggested that although it is easy to find parties to blame, it is more difficult to identify practical solutions.
There is a need for long term investment in agriculture and in support for the institutions serving agriculture. The following questions need to be addressed:

• Why is per capita food production declining?
  
• Why are NARS failing?
  
• Why are investments in building agricultural markets lagging?

The winners from current policies are: NGOs earning overheads; US farmers selling grain; millers/ traders able to capture rents; politicians able to take credit for large hand-outs. And the losers are: farmers and traders facing more uncertain markets (particularly farmers in semi-arid areas, which tend to be remote).

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I don't know whether it is heartening or saddening that there seems to be such agreement about some of the problems that are being identified. In particular: (i) lack of coordination among the agencies responsible for food security (in the case of Lesotho - especially between those responsible for emergency aid and those responsible for development activities); (ii) concentration on politically visible action (generally emergency action) without regard to whether it is in the best long term interests of food security. (The point about the influence of the upcoming South African election on policy is well taken but there is no upcoming election in Lesotho and short term visibility still seems to be the main objective.); (iii) preoccupation with food self sufficiency even where not appropriate.
Solving these problems need changes in attitudes, but not just in governments. The approach of (some) of the donor and other external agencies involved (who should know better) seems to reinforce rather than reduce these problems.
To what extent is it in the interests of donor agencies that food security problems continue to be seen and treated as emergencies?

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My point is that much more effort should be made to promote an intersectoral approach in the area of policy-making and planning for food secturity. Climatical conditions, capacity and availability of resources to sustain commercial food production, the role of markets/trade and industry, etc., should be considered along with social issues, which represent the so-called "soft issues". In addition, as I stated some days ago, population trends and dynamics in different countries, especially in southern Africa, where HIV/AIDS has changed the face of countries completely, should be taken into consideration very specifically. Currently, southern Africa has been deteriorated, mainly due to political instability in certain countries, harsh climatical conditions and continous droughts, effects of globalisation on economic capacity, etc. We should indeed be instrumental in finding ways and means to turn the tide in this part of the world - there are major challenges!

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Contributors suggested that policies and interventions may be poor because the root causes and dynamics of food insecurity in Africa are poorly understood. Dynamic changes are occurring in the sector, due to the impacts of genetic modification of food crops, climate change, globalisation, regional free trade and HIV/AIDS. Labour shortages may drive Africa towards needing to develop capital intensive forms of production, despite the inability to afford them. Information asymmetries damage understanding of the problem. When confronted by food insecurity individuals and institutions interpret the phenomenon through their own biases.

Since the mid 1990s donors (except EU) have placed food security at a lower level of priority than other issues (e.g. poverty reduction, liberalisation etc.). Researchers are often a source of additional problems. Rather than helping to clarify the problems underlying food insecurity by delivering findings which shift paradigms they produce paradigm confirming results - often informed by a uni-disciplinary mode of thinking. A way to improve understanding of food insecurity is to develop 'coordinated and integrated multi-pronged, cross disciplinary, cross institutional approaches with significant weight placed on ideas coming from all quarters including the afflicted masses themselves.'

NGOs have been instrumental in highlighting this food security crisis (especially in Malawi). Governments need help from civil society - although they don't always recognise this. Governments and donors often only 'wake up' when food insecurity reaches disaster proportions, although in many countries in the region there are populations who are chronically food insecure.

Policy makers rarely seek out research findings to support the policy making process, although much of it is easily accessible via the web. The food insecure are rarely included in policy formation processes. (e.g. the urban food insecure in Zimbabwe have no elected representatives in the politburo and so policies are designed which benefit major milling companies instead of them). So, policies are poorly conceived and policy makers get away with designing policies which benefit rent seekers and opportunists. Decision making is further weakened by the lack of institutional capacity plus ideological biases. Policies indicate that markets are poorly understood. Interventions in trade and prices often worsen the situation. How to target production support and consumption smoothing policies is poorly thought through.

Implementation is also poor. There is a lack of M&E to effectively check on the performance of policies - partly due to a lack of capacity and partly due to a lack of funds. In addition, policy design is rarely undertaken with budgeting limits in mind, so they are never implemented - or at least only partially. Instead government money is spent on defence and other non-development expenditures. Donors fail to support policies due to conditionality (e.g. around good governance, macro-stability, respect for human rights, etc.) and an unwillingness to support food security programmes designed by Africans themselves.

Agriculture in Africa continues to be implicitly and sometimes explicitly taxed, damaging poor peasant farmers. Despite an implicit policy focus on national self sufficiency (rather than household food security) policies still do not lead to an increase in levels of production. Poor farmers pay the price for bad agricultural sector policies, but whole countries are damaged by low food security which dampens chances of economic growth.

There is plenty of scope for improving the understanding of the problem and the design and implementation of policy.

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Why have current policies failed to solve the problem of food security? This is a difficult question to start with because it is so broad. It is easy to find parties to blame. It is much more difficult to identify practical solutions fitting both the needs of those with the power to define and implement policy, and the practical capabilities of local institutions to implement. Nonetheless, here are a few thoughts; mostly complaints, I'm afraid.
Response to question 1: I do not see this as the correct specification of the problem. Expansion of food production is an essential contributor to food security. I do not know that any of the SADC countries still insists on self-sufficiency. The main problems on the supply side are a) declining per capita food production and b) delayed/controlled imports; and on the demand side a) limited or controlled grain distribution networks and b) inadequate targeting of support for the most needy. Underlying these problems come basic contradictions in policies and investments promoting technological change and market development.
Response to question 2: Policies first reflect the political imperatives of the day; in drought years these seem to be to hand out food, seeds and fertilizer. The relief arms of donors and NGOs have a vested interest in such programs. Farmers may be asked their opinion. But they all know that the 'right' answer is - "I have no food or seed". But of course most farmers do have seed - because they continue to plant traditional varieties; and most farmers can get access to food if this is available in local shops.
Response to question 3: Ditto point 1 above - the question is the need for long term investment in agriculture and in support for the institutions serving agriculture. One problem is most governments and donors take a short term view - what can be accomplished in the next 5-10 years. The flavor of the day is trade and commercialization. Fifteen years ago it was food security. And most are not willing to learn from their mistakes.
Are there 'Strategic Grain Reserves' that are not manipulated by governments?
Response to question 4: Winners - NGOs earning overheads, US farmers selling maize and wheat; millers/traders able to capture the rents on large imports; politicians able to take credit for hand-outs. Losers - farmers and traders facing more uncertain markets and reduced incentives to produce, maintain and supply food stocks.
Also, most farmers in semi-arid areas, the people most likely to suffer the effects of drought, have the least say in policy making. These areas tend to be isolated, if only because road and market infrastructure favors higher rainfall zones.
Response to question 5: Why is per capita food production declining? Why are NARS failing? Why are investments in building agricultural markets lagging?

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Hardwick makes some telling points. When he writes "However, the main player (which is the government) tends to wake up only during disasters when in most countries in the region", I would add that the same is true of another important group of stakeholders, the bilateral donors and international financial institutions. Apart from the European Commission, food security has had lower priority since the mid 1990s for most donors than poverty reduction, liberalisation etc.

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Response to question 1 from Zimbabwean Perspective: I am pleasantly surprised and indeed pleased to hear the views from RSA and Lesotho that our governments generally articulate policies that are appropriate to the context under which they are to be implemented. On the issue of food security policy focus on the ground, what is often missing is an objective balance of policy interventions to promote production side (supply side) and access side (demand side) of the food security challenge culminating in food security policy failure. This tendency in itself demonstrate limited understanding of the market linkage between supply -side and demand side issues of food security and complementary role that targeted production support policies (promoting income growth among the food insecure) and consumption smoothening policies (to promote access at all times by consumers that would otherwise not afford adequate food on a temporary or permanent basis). Despite a general preoccupation with national food self sufficiency (at the expense of trade based food security), food security has failed primarily due to failure of domestic policies to support growth in domestic food production. Thus often farmers who otherwise would be net suppliers of food to the national market become food insecure and unable to afford food from the market especially during the dry season when prices are very high reflecting limited grain in the market. Failure to stimulate food and agricultural production from the farm sector translate into higher food prices in urban markets and declining wage earning of the urban working class employed in industries that are fundamentally driven by the agricultural sector. Ironically, food marketing and price controls that are often at the root of the food production crisis are justified by government as a means of directly supporting a policy of cheap food meant to pacify the politically outspoken urban population and contain minimum wages industry and commerce at low levels to stimulate industrial growth! Does this apparent contradiction imply that it is impossible for government to promote food production and at the same time support a pragmatic food subsidy program for the vulnerable? On the contrary, policies that stimulate supply (producer price and input access incentives, import incentives especially in years of domestic production failure) help in sustaining low market prices for food which in turn increase affordability of food by wage earners. This would leave government with the supplementary task of providing food consumption subsidies directly to only to those under- employed. The fact that governments have repeatedly intervened on the market with swords and scud missiles when only a scalpel was necessary is symptomatic to the inappropriate nature of our governments' well-intended food security policy interventions.

There is often a mismatch between domestic implementation realities and policy choices. One of the major realities often ignored by our governments is financial and economic implications of food and agricultural policies deemed politically desirable at least in the short-run. Indeed most policies articulated by our governments are seldom fully implemented primarily because budgetary implications are seldom fully taken into account in policy formulation. I shall take the example of Zimbabwe's much celebrated agricultural input credit scheme of the 1980s which is rightfully credited with bringing about the one of the shortest-lived 'green revolution'. To its credit the policy was primarily responsible for temporarily trebling smallholder maize yields which transformed Zimbabwe into a major regional supplier of maize exports albeit at tremendous short-run and long-run cost to the Zimbabwean economy. Though socially and politically desirable, this agricultural credit policy in which government was the provider of credit and guarantor of all loans to the smallholder indigenous farming sector ignored implementation realities and opportunistic behavior of rational borrowers which resulted in the public credit provider suffering from high rates of default from the peasant farmers who to this day still consider any form of agricultural credit as a 'gift from government' rather than a contractual obligation. Government could not possibly sustain a policy of de facto 'free credit for all' farmers and attempts to do so were partially responsible for destabilizing the macroeconomy together with other forms of excesses in agricultural and food marketing subsidies as well as socially desirable but unaffordable socialistic policies of free education for all and free health care for all. Resultant macroeconomic instability fuelled in no small way by excessive agricultural transfers resulted in economic structural mal-alignments in which over production of food grains coexisted with declining production of exportable cash crops (eg sunflower, groundnuts) from smallholder sector and stagnation of industry. Worsening macroeconomic situation propped up domestic support and international pressure for WB-styled economic structural adjustment programs. The versions of ESAP that African countries actively or passively adopted would not pass any test of appropriateness to the African context especially given their lip service that they in retrospect paid to issues of macroeconomic stabilization and excessive preoccupation with removal of all forms of government interventions in the agricultural sector when what was needed was merely the rationalization and better targeting of these support.

Critically looking at the nature and content of the economic structural adjustment programs and agricultural liberalization strategies adopted begrudgingly and implemented half-heartedly by most of our governments, one can agree with critics that these programs and policies were not appropriately configured nor appropriately sequenced strategically to achieve their objectives without unnecessarily compromising food security goals of the African countries under the different context existing in the different Southern African countries. Zimbabwe for example might have thrown away the baby with the bath waters when it adopted an ESAP which advocated for wholesale elimination of agricultural commodity marketing and input credit supports rendering such appropriate technologies such as hybrid maize seed and inorganic fertilizers completely unaffordable to the majority of the smallholder peasant farmers. Since implementation of ESAP, albeit selectively biased against agricultural support services, Zimbabwe's agricultural sector has never recovered fully nor has the country ever returned to its pre-ESAP levels of agricultural growth and food security status. Instead, the post ESAP era has witnessed precipitous decline in maize yields from 2.5tons per hectare to the present day levels of less than 1ton/ha in the peasant agricultural sector. Post ESAP agricultural policies (or missing policies) succeeded to retrogressively transform peasant farmers from rapidly commercializing food secure, surplus farmers of the 1980s to their current status as food insecure, subsistence farmers largely dependent on international food aid. While many critics use such pre-ESAP versus post-ESAP food security scenarios as evidence that ESAP was evil for agriculture and food security, I believe that such a extrapolations are dangerous as the rot in the agricultural sector and food security program had set in long before ESAP was implemented. The appropriate conclusion that can emanate from any such comparative study of the two policy epochs is that both epochs represent varying degrees of failure of government interventions in providing appropriate and sustainable incentives for promoting agricultural growth and food security under the two contrasting socioeconomic environments. Sufficing to say that they are of cause a number of valid criticism of domestic oriented ESAP as a paradigm for development which I share especially those that point to some form of knowledge gaps in the problem diagnosis and implementation design (eg missing attention on issues of institutional transformational process and inadequate attention on importance of getting policy sequence right etc)

As the longest serving government in Southern Africa, the Zimbabwe government has the advantage of institutional memory of policies that worked well versus those that failed in the 1980s and post ESAP era of 1990s. If efficacy of food security policies is at all influenced by experience, learning by doing, learning by observing one would have thought that Zimbabwean government would have a comparative advantage in managing food security and avoiding famine. Yet adoption of costly and ill-timed land reform and agrarian transformation program in 1998 at a time when (i) the Zimbabwean government had limited international good will to lure donor support, (ii) the country had one of the fastest shrinking domestic economies, (iii) agricultural institutions of marketing, extension and credit were incapable of taking up broadened responsibilities as they were already reeling from financial insolvent and under-staffing due to resignations and HIV/AIDs. incapable of taking up new challenges was shrinking at demonstrated once again the complexity of contextualizing policy choices to the present day realities. Though land reform was perhaps socially desirable, the policy choices of method of acquisition, beneficiary selection and support programs have all been inappropriate rendering the program costly socioeconomic and political experiment that Zimbabwe can ill afford at this stage of socioeconomic and political development. Inappropriate choices rendered by the Zimbabwe government has shifted food security situation from merely a software policy issue to a hardware policy issue of re-engineering the structure of the agricultural sector which shall require years of strategic long term investments in recapitalization of recapitalized farms, transformational training of newly resettled farm owners into competent commercial farmers and redesigning service delivery systems to adequately cater for the new type of farmers who shall hold land under non exchangeable forms of tenure which reduce the collateral asset value to zero. I would not call these policy appropriate for the socioeconomic and even political context from the viewpoint of Zimbabwean society as a whole.

In conclusion I can say that in most of our countries, agricultural and food policies have been adopted and implemented at the time, pace and space of convenience to the short-term political agenda of our rent-seeking and opportunistic politicians-cum-policy makers often at the expense of the broader social agenda of sustainable agricultural development and long-term national food security. I have used examples from Zimbabwe because I believe that the country has a fascinating food security history that is rich in both positive and negative food security policy experiences seldom found in one country and from which the rest of SADC can learn. The tendency these days is to dismiss Zimbabwean experiences as special cases of no relevance to the rest of SADC who have charted different socioeconomic and political pathways of development. To this end, all I can say is that Zimbabwean policy makers were equally corky in mid1980s, sitting as they were atop of mountains of food security reserves, dismissing the food security crisis of Zambia and Ethiopia as irrelevant to the Zimbabwean situation and by so doing missing a historic opportunity to learn about avoidable food security policy failures!. If one were to design a comprehensive yardstick to use for measuring appropriateness of agricultural and food security policy choices rendered by national governments and international development agencies, one would insist on sufficiently balanced weightings being put on (i) content relevance of the policy to the African problem-solution set of feasible possibilities, (ii) process issues of ownership and legitimacy in policy formulation and implementation, (ii) implementation issues of timing, speed and financial cost, and (iii) expected social returns in terms of realistically expected outcomes ranging from income growth and food security as well as social goals of justice, fairness and equity. On the basis of such a yardstick, the food security policies of most of our governments in Southern Africa and international development agencies would not receive a perfect score demonstrating that there is still tremendous scope of improving the quality and relevance of planned food security interventions to the goal of sustaining food security. There is scope for our own governments to improve quality of policy choices and outcomes by (a) paying more attention to present social, economic and financial realities of the national over and above the political agendas, and (b) crafting policies and programs that are motivated by a sincere desire to implement pragmatic policies that the country can readily implement with its own limited resources. The new reality in development financing is that African countries should look inward towards wealth creating growth strategies to create own investment capacity rather than continue looking outward for donors to continue financing their development and food security ambitions.

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Response to question 1: One would argue that the policies are largely poorly conceived and implemented. Concurring with Reneth (from Zimbabwe), the policies fail to adequately balance the complexity associated with achieving food security among different segments of the population. Most countries, and Malawi (specifically) have tended to promote self sufficiency in maize to be synonymous with food security policy. This in-ward looking policy has often been justified as a way of avoiding the risk of having to rely on trade or self-reliance(since Malawi does not have an easy access to reliable trade routes). For Malawi, where productivity is ever declining due to continuous soil fertility mining without adequate replenishment, the in-ward looking policy would certainly never work. It is important that the on-going process of formulating a food security policy should strive to balance domestic production and trade related means. Informal cross-border trade mainly with Mozambique and Tanzania has assisted in area.
Response to question 2: Going by the recent crisis, the NGO food security network and the entire civil society in general has tended to be very instrumental. At the time when both government and donors thought all was okey, it was the NGOs that sounded the initial warning of an impending crisis. However, their persistent warnings were undermined until the situation got worse. So one would argue that there is an important role that other stakeholders, particularly NGOs that are close to the population, can play in ensuring the most effective achievement of food security. Efforts to foster links between all stakeholders should therefore be encouraged. Otherwise, even if resources are abundant, government alone cannot effectively tackle the food security problem.
Response to question 3: Attaining food security in most countries in the region requires relentless efforts by all stakeholders. However, the main player (which is the government) tends to wake up only during disasters when in most countries in the region, there are certainly some segments of the population that experience chronic food insecurity. In most cases what you hear are political rhetoric not fully backed by budgetary committment. In Malawi for example, the worsening of most macroeconomic fundamentals (which is affecting everybody, but hurting the most poor) is due mostly to government's insatiable expenditure and fiscal indiscipline. There are priority pro-poor areas such as health, agriculture, education that still remain under-funded, at least relative to some areas that do receive funding when they are not at all a priority (in the pro-poor sense).
Response to question 4: Poor farmers are the ones that always pay the costs. However, in the long-run everybody becomes a loser because growth cannot be sustained in situations where the majority continue to face chronic food insecurity and are always having to cope with harsh economic environments. This is the more reason why growth remains highly unattainable in countries that face food insecurity.
Response to question 5: (i) poor formulation leading to poor design of policies; (ii) poor implementation of the poorly designed policies; (iii) lack of effective monitoring and evaluation of the performance of the policies, including the lack of effective early warning mechanisms. This is both as a result of lack of adequate resources and also partly lack of capacity.

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Contributors to the debate today focused on Lesotho and South Africa. They felt that in both countries the response to the food security crisis had been 'reactive', with poorly targeted food package 'handouts' and inappropriate policies. These undermined farmer's ability to respond constructively and by treating the situation as an emergency, led to a failure to respond to the structural causes of food shortage. So, while there has been political commitment to resolve food insecurity, the focus on quick fixes blocks attempt to identify new ways of achieving food security.

Winners and losers from food security policies

• Lesotho: better off farmers have benefited from subsidies
  
• South Africa: losers = the poor (especially women and children) and farmers (who are pressurised by government
  

Consultation and participative policy-making

It was felt that policy was formulated through consultation, but that the needs of the poor and farmers were sometimes ignored.

Other points:

• The promotion of unsuitable crops contributes to the problem in Lesotho
  
• There is an inadequate link between donor's emergency spending and development spending
  
• There has been inadequate attention given to population dynamics
  
• There is implicit emphasis on national food security in Lesotho, although explicitly debates have moved on.
  

Reneth Mano

Question: Why have current policies failed to solve the problem of food security?
Answer: There are FOUR possible explanations of why policies fail - among systems issues among other process issues that are addressed in the subsequent questions. Based on the policy making process, food security policies fail because of one or more of the following FOUR types of errors in the policy analysis and implementation process: (i) Errors in diagnosis of the problem; (ii) Errors in the choice of policy interventions to address the problem; (iii) Errors in the implementation of the chosen solution; (iv) Errors in knowledge of the whole dynamic set-up of the food security problem - solution space.

(a) Diagnostic and informational error - The dimensions and root causes of the food security problem poorly understood by policy analysts and policy makers alike. The fact that food security problems continue to afflict the African problem despite numerous interventions and investments being made by national governments, regional bodies such as SADC and multilateral organizations such as UN agencies, WB and NGOs demonstrate that perhaps the experts are not fully aware of the root causes and dynamic dimensions of the food security problem facing the continents. Indeed most governments and organizations often intervene to solve the African food security problem from their own vantage points constrained by their own informational asymmetries, institutional capacity and ideological biases. Similarly research institutions which are supposed to inform policy makers have also contributed to the problem by introducing their own systemic biases emanating from limitations in the scope of their own uni-disciplinary professional training, from source of research funding and limited time that the researcher has/wants to spend in the field unraveling the complex dimensions of the problem, the bias towards paradigm confirming as opposed to paradigm shifting theoretical and empirical expositions in major journals. food security research institutions have been self serving rather than oriented to solving actual problems and informing policy. When confronted with a food insecure and malnourished African child with an extended belly and blondying hair style, different players from different disciplines, ideologies, organizations see different images and visions of root causes and possible solutions. They choose to see whatever they want to see and choose not to consider anything else that might be seen from another angle or said by the suffering child leading them to implement partial solutions of their convenience to the complex dynamic food security problem. The problem is obviously better understood and better addressed from a coordinated and integrated multi-pronged, cross disciplinary, cross institutional approach with significant weight being placed on ideas coming from all quarters including the afflicted masses themselves. There is an adage that says a problem well understood is a problem half solved and thus one can add that a food security problem misunderstood is a chronic problem never well-resolved!

(b) Error in Choosing the Appropriate Policy Interventions for the Food Security Problem- The problem might possibly be very well understood and its major components sufficiently articulated yet policies continue to fail because of inappropriate and ineffective policy prescriptions being applied Granted near to perfect knowledge about the food security problem, do policy makers have access to complete information about the set of policy options that can effectively and completely address the problem at least cost to society? Are the most economically efficient and effective food security policies politically viable under the African political economic landscape? African governments in general have had a penchant for choosing agricultural and food policies that appear contrary to their stated national food security and food self sufficiency and equity goals. The continued implicit and sometimes explicit taxation of food production sector dominated by poor peasant farmers is a case in point. Agricultural sections of National Economic Development plans of most African governments content that agricultural growth is the key to economic growth but go own to enact pricing and export marketing policy that discourage agricultural growth. At the peak of the land reform program in Zimbabwe, the national government contradicted its deafening rhetoric about land being the key to wealth creation for the poor land-hungry peasant by implementing a version of land reform that favored resettlement of civil servants and urban elites at the expense of land-hungry peasant farmers in accessing nationalized former white owned commercial farms land. In addition, at the eve of the 2002 famine the government unilaterally chose to suspend private marketing and pricing of maize and gazette producer prices that offered predominantly peasant farmers less than 10% of the import parity price of maize. Yet policy documents authored by the same government extolled the virtues of market friendly regulations to safeguard efficiency benefits of market liberalization while ensuring food security for the poor consumers. Indeed we acknowledge that there are inevitable trade-offs in bulk of policy choices rendered by government. But the apparent willingness of governments to adopt economically inefficient agricultural and food policies in the presence of less economically and politically costly policy options for enhancing food security as well as sustaining political fortunes demonstrate that policy decisions of African governments are under informed. Ministries of agriculture often lament that they are seldom informed of policy research findings undertaken by researchers in their own backyard and that they are often forced to make policy decisions without information which is otherwise available on various websites of national and international research centers! The proliferation of local initiatives on agricultural and food policy research and dialogue forums in Africa (eg SoilFertNet-Economic & Policy Forum, FANR-PAN, SARPN of SADC, ICAPAPA and ASERECA of Eastern and Central Africa, CORAF, APAN of West Africa)indicates that the policy researchers acknowledge that they have in the past played little role in engaging policy makers on policy matters based on objective and timely research results. However policy makers in some countries are still very hostile to any form of scrutiny of their policies and programs especially before implementation!

(c) The Implementation error - The appropriate policy choices are made but implementation is often incomplete and half-hearted In Southern Africa, I have come across some of the most well-written agricultural development and food security policy programs. If only half the programs were implemented over the time frame stated therein perhaps the region would have eliminated the systemic policy failures at the root of the present food security crisis. A major reason for delayed and suspension of implementation of approved development plans is (a) apparent financial infeasibility of the program which might sound good and complete but not affordable from the current levels of fiscal allocations to relevant implementation Ministries and agencies, (b) lack of external donor support for sectoral programs due to (i) external conditionality that are not met by African governments eg democracy and good governance, macro economic stability, respect of human rights and rule of law, (ii) apparent reluctance of external donors and development agencies to finance food security programs crafted primarily by Africans themselves - which in itself has become part of the donor culture to which African governments. Food security programs often end up severely underfunded while such pet programs as modernization and expansion of national defense forces continue to receive bulk of national budget allocation. Underfunding is seldom a problem of size of budget but a reflection of relative political weights attached to the food security interests groups (unorganized, poor rural farmers and urban unemployed and under paid who contribute very little resources to ruling party) versus the defense industry lobby group which enjoy immense political goodwill especially from politically insecure regimes. Implementation is sometimes prematurely terminated because of political interference of powerful politicians on behalf of the powerful minority adversely affected by the policy program set to benefit the disenfranchised majority suffering from food insecurity. In Zimbabwe, efforts from Ministry of Lands, Agriculture and Rural resettlement to restore free market pricing of maize has been thwarted by the Milling industry lobby who argue that the 'poor would not afford free market prices of maize meal' when they are already buying almost all of their requirements at parallel market where some of the milling companies have been side marketing their products. Despite evidence that the current maize meal subsidy is primarily benefiting the indigenous milling industry who receive imported maize at Z$9600 (or 97% subsidy over landed cost of US$300 per ton) from government only to resell it on the thriving parallel market at Z$300,000 (ie US$300/ton) to the urban poor. Even though the free market system might provide cheaper maize to the urban poor, the government has refused to take-up policy recommendations from its own Ministry on the pretext of making maize more affordable to the urban poor. The urban poor are currently represented in parliament by the opposition party and no effective voice in the ruling party's cabinet and politburo meetings where food policy decisions are often made compared to the smaller, organized indigenous milling industry which is dominated by ruling elite.

(d) Incomplete knowledge of the Food Insecurity Problem and Solution. Most development practitioners in Africa are skeptical whether the current body of knowledge on the African food security crisis and policy options is complete given the dynamic changes occurring in the world such as new opportunities and threats to African agriculture presented by globalization and free regional trade. The extent of HIV/AIDS which is decimating the African population and rapidly robbing the continent of the most productive age group of its demography and its unfolding long term implications on Africa's current labor-intensive agricultural system are not yet fully understood. Africa might for be forced to adopt capital intensive food and agricultural production systems of the more developed countries of Europe and North America at a time when underdeveloped national economies have very limited capacity to generate such capital. In a world moving rapidly towards globalization and free trade, the prospects of Africa retaining its comparative advantage in domestic supply of food might have been irreversibly diminished by the vanishing effects of HIV/AIDS. Yet policy makers at national levels continue to believe in the potential of domestic agriculture in in their national food security strategies.

The issue of climate change and its implications on Africa's long term agricultural and food production systems is also currently not sufficiently understood by African policy makers enough to make progressive and preemptive policy interventions. Yet some of the manifestations of global warming such as increased frequency of droughts and increased variability of rains beyond mean levels culminating in flooding of productive low lands and drought in uplands are already adversely impacting on regional food security. Absence of practical knowledge regarding climatic change and mitigation strategies perhaps explains why our governments continue to treat droughts as unexpected when it has become a frequent and systematic guest to the SADC region and permanent resident of the African continent.When our policy makers begin to have as much knowledge about droughts as our collective selves perhaps they will start adopting drought mitigating strategies such as investment in irrigation and water harvesting and water management techniques more seriously than at present.

Despite the fact that the Southern African region has been a consumer of other GMO materials (such as crude soybean from USA and Argentina) for the past decade, the SADC governments were forced for the first time to consider seriously the issue of GMO maize in their national and regional food security strategies. Needless to say the level of ignorance among regional leaders and policy makers of the human health and trade implications of domestic consumption and production of GMO maize were both adequately exposed. Incomplete knowledge reflect lack of access to existing knowledge banks as well as the absence of knowledge from current knowledge systems. Policy failures in addressing African food security dilemma is a function of both types of knowledge gaps.There is scope for more problem focused knowledge creating policy research and networking to improve access by regional leadership of existing knowledge on technologies and policy options for improving food security.

The question for Africa is not which of the four types of errors common occur in food security policies. Our governments have not been serious and consistent in addressing the food security challenges. This is illustrated by their limited investment in understanding the food security problem in all its dimensions and seriously exploring policy options that work to address the problem effectively rather than the present preoccupation with rent seeking opportunities for themselves and their special interests. Lack of adequate investment in public food production and policy research is symptomatic of this casual approach nurtured perhaps by rational expectations of food aid whenever domestic food production systems collapse!

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Here are some immediate reactions (in note form) to your questions on why current policies have failed to solve the problem of food security in the specific case of Lesotho:
Responses to question 1: (i) It would be no bad thing if there were MORE attention given to the issue of food production (how appropriate it is, what the alternatives are) in the food security policies of Lesotho; (ii) The policy of attacking food security as if it's an emergency problem (food and inputs handouts) in the country is inhibiting the ability of farmers to deal with the problems themselves over the longer term; (iii) Yes, there is a continuing IMPLICIT emphasis on national self sufficiency in food crops. Even though the formal policy is NOT self sufficiency, political statements often seem to continue to be based on the implicit assumption that self sufficiency in the staple grains are (or should be) a national goal.
Responses to question 2: (i) Primary stakeholders DO have an input into policy formulation - but not in a properly informed participative way. The political pressure (apparently supported by many primary stakeholders) is for continuing emergency handouts (without proper discussion of the longer term consequences) and this is what they get; (ii) There ARE differences in the way different vulnerable groups are treated, but not everyone would agree that the treatment offered is always appropriate to those groups.
Responses to question 3: (i) I believe that there really IS political commitment to achieve food security in Lesotho. Certainly massive resources (by local standards) have been devoted to it. The problems have been willingness by the institutions involved (and not just national ones!) to go for quick / dramatic / high profile fixes and not be open to discussion on alternative ways of achieving the food security.
Responses to question 4: (i) There can be no doubt that better-off farmers have benefited from food security policies (=subsidies) in addition to poor ones. The question as to whether the net effect has been improved access by the vulnerable to food - both for the short term and the long term - is more complicated and I have not seen data that could lead to an informed conclusion.
Responses to question 5: (i) Because they treat the food problem in the country as an emergency; (ii) Because the cultivation of inappropriate crops have continued to be encouraged; (iii) Because there is no linkage between emergency aid when it really is needed and longer term development activities for the recipients of emergency food aid and other vulnerable groups.