“SCREAMING IN HUNGER”
Food insecurity becoming a bigger problem amid the coronavirus
Long before the pandemic swept into her village in southeast Afghanistan, Halima Bibi knew the gnawing fear of hunger. It was an omnipresent force, an unrelenting source of anxiety as she struggled to nourish her four children.
Her husband earned about $ 5 a day, hauling produce by wheelbarrow from a local market to surrounding homes. Most days, he brought home a loaf of bread, potatoes and beans for an evening meal.
But when the coronavirus arrived in March, taking the lives of her neighbors and shutting down the market, her husband’s earnings plunged to about $ 1 a day. Most evenings, he brought home only bread. Some nights, he returned with nothing.
“We hear our children screaming in hunger, but there is nothing that we can do,” said Bibi, whose 6- year- old daughter was being treated for severe malnutrition. “That is not just our situation, but the reality for most of the families where we live.”
It is increasingly the reality for hundreds of millions of people. As the global economy absorbs the most punishing reversal of fortunes since the Great Depression, hunger is on the rise. Those confronting potentially life- threatening levels of so- called food insecurity in the developing world are expected to nearly double this year to 265 million, according to the U. N. World Food Program.
The largest numbers of vulnerable communities are concentrated in South Asia and Africa, especially in countries that are already confronting trouble, from military conflict and extreme poverty to climate- related afflictions such as drought, flooding and soil erosion.
While food remains widely available in most of the world, prices have climbed as fear of the virus disrupts transportation links and as currencies fall in value, increasing the costs of imported items.
Lines at food banks
When the pandemic emerged in South Africa in March, the government ordered the shutdown of informal food vendors and township shops, unleashing the military to detain merchants who violated orders. That forced Black residents to rely on supermarkets in the city — farther away than ever, given the lockdown of bus service.
At the same time, South Africa closed its schools, eliminating school lunches — the only reliable meal for millions of students — just as breadwinners lost their means of getting to
jobs. By the end of April, nearly half of all South African households had exhausted their funds to buy food, according to an academic study. Social unrest eventually prompted a loosening of the country’s restrictions.
Even in the wealthiest countries — the U. S., Spain, Britain — working people who have never felt compelled to seek help are lining up at food banks.
Just as the need for help intensifies, the threat of the virus is forcing relief agencies to scrap public health campaigns and limit their outreach. Lockdowns imposed to halt the pandemic will this year deprive 250 million children in poor countries of scheduled supplements of Vitamin A, elevating the threat of premature death, according to UNICEF.
The virus has also forced the delay of other immunization programs, which are typically combined with doses of deworming medicine — another bulwark against malnutrition.
“I’m increasingly concerned about the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic on the nutrition situation of children,” said Victor Aguayo, chief of nutrition programs at UNICEF in New York.
Food prices rise
Food prices have been rising in much of Africa for the same reason that Samuel Omondi has endured about six months without seeing his family — because of the chaos gripping the roads.
A father of five, Omondi, 42, makes his living driving a truck, typically hauling wheat. It used to take him four days to complete his usual round trip from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the Ugandan capital of Kampala, a distance of 1,400 miles. Now, the same journey requires eight to 10 days.
Drivers cannot enter either country without certificates showing they are free of COVID. Test results can take as long as four days.
Throughout the region, immigration and customs checks have become so onerous that lines form 40 miles before borders. Trucks progress slowly, in low gear, consuming extra fuel. An outbreak of pandemic- related nationalism — with countries blaming one another for the spread of the disease — has produced an escalating wave of trade barriers that has amplified the trouble on the roads. In a recent survey conducted by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 11 African countries — among them Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo — 85% of the respondents said food was available in their local markets. But 94% reported that prices had increased, and 82% said incomes were down.
Falling demand
In the Indian capital of New Delhi, Champa Devi and her family have responded to a loss of income by downgrading their diet. “We have to squeeze our wallets,” said Devi, 29. “Now, we’re surviving on dal and roti” — the Indian staple of watery lentils and flatbread.
India’s shutdown eliminated paychecks for office workers. Migrant workers lost their construction jobs. And that produced what seems like a counterintuitive problem in the midst of rising hunger: falling demand for crops.
Satbir Singh Jatain in August relinquished his bottle gourds to the elements, allowing them to rot on the vine rather than wasting the effort to harvest them.
“There’s no point in even picking them and taking them to the market,” he said.
Since the lockdown, Jatain, a third- generation farmer, has lost more than 700,000 rupees ($ 10,000), he said.
Jatain is on the hook for bank loans reaching nearly $ 18,000. He owes money lenders in his village. “I can never pay it back, and soon they will come for my land,” he said. “There is nothing left for us.”