Food crisis likely to hit southern Africa

By Toby Reynolds
 
ARTICLE (November 06 2002) : Drought is always a fear for southern Africans, but this year farmers are keeping a close eye on a brewing El Nino weather pattern that looks likely to exacerbate regional food supply problems.

Southern Africa is already up to its neck in a food crisis, with the UN estimating more than 14 million people could be affected by shortages. Experts say further dry spells are the last thing these countries need. And now farmers in the regional breadbasket of South Africa have started to look with concern at the empty skies over their fields, fearing that their harvests could soon suffer the same fate as those of their neighbours.

"The picture is not a good one. We are not going to get a lot of rain. I don't think most of the farmers are happy to get a forecast like this," Melton Mugeri, long-term forecaster with South Africa's weather bureau, told Reuters.

He said an El Nino weather pattern is heading for southern Africa from the Pacific ocean, and is likely to dry up much of the region from Zimbabwe, southern Zambia, Botswana and Namibia all the way down to South Africa.

El Nino, "little boy" in Spanish, the four-yearly phenomenon stems from unusually high sea temperatures in the Pacific, and goes on to distort weather patterns world-wide.

It has already been blamed for unexpected floods in Europe and India, and harvest-wrecking droughts in Australia and the United States this year.

Although Africa is far from the pattern's nursing ground, and has yet to experience this year the dramatic floods and droughts that brought the name "El-Nino" into common parlance on the continent in 1998, farmers in South Africa are already looking to the skies and praying for rain.

"We need rain in the next two weeks," Rodney Dredge, chairman of South Africa's National Crop Estimates Committee told Reuters, adding that otherwise he would have to slash his expectations for the coming harvest.

Meteorologists across southern Africa say they are not yet sure exactly how strong the pattern will be or when it will hit, but they are warning the agricultural sector to watch out.

Zimbabwe's Meteorological Department said there was a 95 percent chance of El Nino weather this season, although that likelihood had decreased from a near-certainty a few months ago.

"If I were a farmer I would be very worried," said one Zimbabwean forecaster.

He added that the pattern usually brought dry weather for the country's southern farms, which used to produce huge exportable surpluses of food before political turmoil brought production in the country to a standstill. El Nino was expected to bring extra rain to the less productive northern areas.

A statement from a meeting of regional forecasters, the Sixth Southern African Regional Climate Outlook Forum, forecast below-normal rains for South Africa, southern Zimbabwe and southern Zambia, but said the current El Nino was still weak, and that the magnitude of its impact on rainfall was unclear.

The statement said sea temperatures in the Indian and Atlantic oceans could significantly modulate the strength of the El Nino pattern at a late stage in its development.

Zambia's meteorologists also predicted that the pattern would split the country, with northern areas receiving above average rain and the southern agricultural regions staying dry.

Source:  Business Recorder