HIV/Aids threatens subsistence agriculture in Mozambique with long-term decline, with ominous implications for the country’s food supply, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned on Tuesday.
A major new study of subsistence agriculture in Mozambique has documented the loss of many varieties of grains, tubers, legumes and vegetables due to HIV/Aids, flood and drought, said the Rome-based FAO in a statement received in Johannesburg.
The disease is impoverishing agricultural households.
The study showed that 45% of respondents from HIV/Aids-affected households said they had reduced the area under cultivation and 60% said they had reduced the number of crops grown.
”This study documents an alarming trend affecting millions of the poorest rural households. The problem affects not only Mozambique but also countries across southern and eastern Africa, where HIV/Aids is just as big a problem,” said FAO HIV/Aids expert Marcela Villarreal.
Study author Anne Waterhouse said the results showed that HIV/Aids was likely to have a ”highly negative” impact on local knowledge because it affected the passing of farming know-how about traditional crops from generation to generation as infected adults slowly become incapacitated and stopped planting many varieties.
”Most of the farmers use seeds that they produce themselves to grow their own crops; the way they pass on knowledge about how to identify, improve and conserve that seed is from parent to children,” she said.
”So what happens if you stop producing a certain seed type is that the knowledge around it is not passed on.”
The FAO said it was important not to lose traditional crop varieties because they acted as an insurance policy against hunger as they are adapted to local conditions and will produce a minimal harvest even during drought.
Moreover, hybrid or ”improved” seeds, which do not withstand drought as well as traditional seeds, require fertiliser and plentiful water, that are often beyond the means of the poorest farmers.
In Mozambique, more than 1,3-million people out of a population of 18-million are thought to be living with HIV/Aids. The FAO predicted that by 2020 the country would have lost over 20% of its agricultural labour force to the pandemic.
In the nine hardest-hit African countries, all in southern and eastern Africa, FAO predicted a loss of agricultural labour because of the disease, ranging from 13% in the United Republic of Tanzania to 26% in Namibia. – Sapa