 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Food comes first
By Khaled Mansour *As John Powell, United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) regional manager for West and Central Asia, approached his car, Oenamoha Abdelrahmanova energetically rose from the middle of a small circle of poor Tajik peasants asking him to wait. Visiting the province of Khatlon in Tajikistan, Powell had earlier met with the heavily wrinkled 80-year old widow, but she wanted to make sure that the visit by those seemingly important foreigners from the nearby provincial capital of Kurgan Tyube, from Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan and beyond would not pass like the one the year before. "Why didn't you give me land to cultivate," she protested with unexpected strength for someone her age. Abdelrahmanova, who was born three years after the communist revolution in Russia, wants to join more than 23,000 people mainly from the Khatlon province, who received help from WFP to cultivate 24,000 hectares of state-owned land. Traumatised by a five-year-long civil war that ended in 1997, and still largely unable to fend for themselves after the total collapse of state social services, these struggling people found in the WFP-assisted project a shelter that enabled them not only to subsist and provide for their families, but also to regain hope after a turbulent period.
Since 1996, WFP has been one of the most active international organisations in this southwest province's ambitious plan for leasing land from the Kolkhozes (collective farms) and Sovkhozes (state farms) and distributing it among some of the most vulnerable people.
During the Soviet era, all agricultural land was managed by these Kolkhozes and Sovkhozes, and despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, after which Tajikistan became independent, the state still formally controls the land. After the civil war and as a result of a disintegrating social system, irrigation and drainage systems were in total disrepair, poor farmers lacked many of the essential agricultural inputs (i.e. seed, fertilisers, machinery, etc.). The farming system in Tajikistan was in ruins.
The annual crop yields plummeted, swiftly decreasing by 17 per cent in 1999 alone. It is estimated that national domestic production of wheat flour in 1999/2000 will not exceed 430,000 tons, a dire prediction for a country that needs one million tons of wheat to meet its annual domestic consumption.
Every participant household in the land leasing project receives half a hectare of irrigated arable land (one hectare if the land does not have irrigation infrastructure). Participant households are each required to deliver 10 to 20 per cent of the income of the main crop to the concerned Kolkhoz. WFP provides food to the participants in order to meet their household needs during the planting season and the pre-harvest period. Before the first crop is harvested, each person receives some 600 kilogrammes of wheat flour (450 only if seed and fertilisers are provided through other partner organisations).
A few kilometres away from Abdelrahmanova's crumbling mud house, farmers, both male and female, were tilling a 30-hectare piece of land in the Bokhtar district. Under a trilateral agreement among the farmers, Kommunism (the local Kolkhoz) and WFP, the land was leased to 60 people from the village in October 1999.
Women and men were working with long hoes turning the soil that had been tilled with a locally rented tractor. One woman returned from Afghanistan two years ago where she had fled to escape the raging civil war in the early 1990s. Khatlon province, which contains most of Tajikistan's arable lands, was the most adversely affected, and now it is in dire need of aid to help accommodate thousands of returnees and, possibly in the future, feed the rest of the country. Unlike Abdelrahmanova and other extremely poor beneficiaries of the Vulnerable Group Feeding programmes in Kumsanger district, the women and men in the Bokhtar project were more confident and optimistic. "We will plant corn and maize and use the crop to ensure our food supply," one woman said. "We might sell a small portion to pay for new seed and fertilisers for the following season," a man added.
"Thirty-nine similar land leasing projects in Khatlon have been provided with about 1,897 tons of wheat flour by WFP to help these new farmers produce over 5,800 tons of cereals and vegetables," said WFP country representative Bouchan Hadj-Chikh.
WFP-Tajikistan intends to shift the focus of its development activities in Tajikistan during the next two years from supplying food relief to creating sustainable assets for the hungry poor in this country. In 1999, WFP fed about 270,000 hungry poor Tajiks participating in the Vulnerable Group Feeding programme and other similar schemes while more than 100,000 others benefited from WFP-assisted development schemes. This balance is expected to shift in the coming two years so that programmes such as land leasing move to the forefront of WFP activities. "Within the framework of such a development-oriented plan, WFP intends to provide food to over half a million people to enable them to engage in development activities such as leasing and cultivating lands from the state as well as improving access to schools and health centres," said Powell.
Food aid does more than keep people alive today. It can help the beneficiaries to build a better future for themselves and their families. Hunger is the first threshold to cross in eradicating poverty. Abdelrahmanova hopes that if she is unable to cross this barrier, her only daughter and her two granddaughters might be able to. Not having received her meagre pension for over a year and threatened by the possible collapse of her ramshackle two-room house, this amazing woman does not seem to want to be sustained by aid, but to earn her own living. Laila Ahadi, head of WFP sub-office in Kurgan Tyube, Khatlon's provincial capital, would like to see the land leasing projects expanded even further. "We are unable [to increase the amount of land to be leased] most of the time because the Kolkhozes either do not rent land or sometimes refuse to secure the contracts beyond one year," she said.
The land lease scheme could provide a bridge for Abdelrahmanova and people like her in Tajikistan if the government proceeds faster with privatising land in such a way as to benefit future small landowners. Senior Tajik officials are committed to this transformation, but for a country emerging from 70 years of total state control, this could prove a difficult, though not insurmountable task. A senior official of the Khatlon province told a visiting WFP senior administrator in her office in Kurghan Tyube that WFP assistance to help cultivate the land was highly appreciated. "Without WFP support we would not be able to provide for those people," said the official.
But promises made in Dushanbe and Kurghan Tyube will be difficult to fulfill, unless there is a concomitant change, ideologically and administratively, on the part of the people who still run the Kolkhozes and the Sovkhozes. Also, WFP-Tajikistan will need additional funds from donors to enable it to continue its indispensable role in this massive transformation.
The United States and the European Union were the largest donors to WFP in 1999 accounting for 41 per cent and 34 per cent, respectively, of the wheat flour that was distributed by the organisation in Tajikistan. The United States provided 7,500 tons of wheat flour and 500 tons of vegetable oil, but its pledges for the year 2000 are much lower, not exceeding 2,000 tons of wheat and 300 tons of oil. In 1999, the European Union, through the European Commission Humanitarian Office, gave 6,040 tons of wheat flour, and an additional 1,538 tons of food are expected to arrive in the coming few weeks (1,305 tons of flour and 233 of oil).
In spite of these commitments WFP-Tajikistan is still quite short of its planned needs.
The development and stability of Tajikistan is vital for the emerging states of Central Asia in particular, and the world in general. Food security is a crucial bridge to cross towards stability and self-sufficiency. The land leasing programme and similar development schemes including those devised by the WFP are the main spans of this bridge.
Abdelrahmanova, who lifted the old mats on her mud floor to show us how damp it is underneath, hopes to join other women in benefiting from the land leasing programme, in which 57 per cent of the participants are women. Maybe then, she can fix the long forsaken broken radio resting on the only table in her second room. Not far from the silent box was the only provision she had for this cold Tajik winter until her next WFP ration -- less than one sack of flour.
* The writer is the WFP regional public information officer for West and Central Asia. He accompanied Regional Manager John Powell on a visit to Tajikistan on January 25-31.
