Chicago Tribune - September 18, 2002
Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent

About 14.4 million people--a 12 percent rise from the UN's July estimates--face starvation before March's harvest if food aid is not delivered, said James Morris, head of the UN World Food Program.

"The intensity of this crisis is increasing faster than we ever expected," he said Monday after visiting Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland.

UN workers found children fainting in school, student enrollment plunging and more families where "mom and dad are gone, grandmother now leads the family or the child leads the family," Morris said.

The most productive members of the family are dying of AIDS, he said, leading to lower family income, less food production and about 4 million orphans in the region.

Morris called it "a crisis of incredible proportions."

One in four people in the affected nations has AIDS or is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, the UN said.

About half of those threatened with starvation in the region are in Zimbabwe, where government land seizures and economic policies have combined with drought to cripple agricultural production. Because Zimbabwe normally exports food to the region, "the change in output there affects all six countries," Morris said.

Zimbabweans are worst affected in part because the government has fixed food prices at a level below the cost of production, drying up domestic production and private-sector imports of grain. That has left the burden of providing food on President Robert Mugabe's government and on aid groups, UN officials said.

The country's chaotic land reform also ensures Zimbabwe's farm production will remain low for at least another growing season or two. The first harvests are expected in March if rains return.

Graham Farmer, southern African emergency coordinator for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said his agency is helping provide seeds and other agricultural assistance to small farmers in Zimbabwe.

World Food Program officials say international donors have come up with about 36 percent of the $507 million in food aid the agency estimates is needed to address the crisis and are close to finishing deals on another 30 percent. The United States has provided nearly 60 percent of the donated grain.

Morris said the furor over aid in the form of genetically modified corn has largely died away. While most southern African countries have no strong objections to accepting bioengineered corn as food, they want to ensure such imports are milled so the seeds cannot be accidentally or purposely planted. Milling deals have been worked out in most of the countries, Morris said, though Zambia, which has 2.9 million people facing starvation, remains opposed to genetically modified imports.

Many African countries are seeking to keep their corn crops free of genetically modified varieties in hope of winning higher prices on the international markets from Europe and Japan, which bar most bioengineered crops.

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