FEWS Kenya Food Security Update 10 Apr 2003

SUMMARY

• The start of the 2003 long-rains season has been erratic at best and substantially late in southern Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western Provinces.
  
  
• Harvests will be delayed and the national maize supply is unlikely to meet consumption during the critical July-September period.
  
  
• Maize prices are generally increasing in markets across the country, though they have declined as expected in the marginal agricultural areas where harvesting has just been completed.
  
  
• Food insecurity remains high in the severely drought affected pastoral districts of West Pokot, Baringo, southern Turkana, Marakwet and Keiyo. The probability of below-normal rainfall during the season will likely heighten food insecurity.
  
  
• On-going relief food interventions coordinated by the Office of the President's (OP's) Relief and Rehabilitation Department in concert with NGOs are expected to moderate the impact of successive poor seasons worsened by endemic conflict.
  
  
• The Disaster Preparedness Fund co-managed by WFP and the OP continued Food for Work activities in selected pastoral districts to combat the lingering adverse impact of previous droughts.

1. National Trends

1.1. Agroclimatic Conditions

The long-awaited 2003 long-rains season finally began during the last week of March, ending the worrisome delay in southern Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western Provinces where farmers normally begin planting two-months earlier. The season also began slightly late in both Central and Eastern Provinces.

The 2003 long-rains season has been unusually erratic in most areas. In particular, little or no rain has been fallen in the arable districts of Eastern, Central and Coast Provinces after the tentative start during the last week of March. Figure 1 compares rainfall during March with the average. As shown in Figure 1, only a few parts of the pastoral areas received rainfall. These include localized areas of West Pokot, Turkana, Marsabit and Garissa Districts. Most other pastoral areas remained characteristically dry.

The Kenya Meteorological Department has also indicated that April rainfall will likely be below normal in most areas outside districts adjacent to Lake Victoria and along the coastal strip. Such an outcome would greatly aggravate the already high food security of pastoralists in the hardest hit West Pokot, Baringo, Marakwet, Keiyo and southern Turkana Districts. In addition, crop output will likely be adversely affected by the predicted drop in April rains, particularly in Eastern, Central and Coast Provinces, where the season is characteristically shorter than in other arable areas of the country.

1.2. Crop Production

Land preparation has proceeded especially well in the key production areas of the Rift Valley Province. Farmers have attributed the good land preparation to improved income from favorable producer prices during the latter part of 2002, which have now made plowing services and other farm inputs affordable.

However, planting lags behind far schedule. The 2003 long-rains cropping season has started poorly in the key areas of Western, Nyanza and the southern Rift because rains were delayed by close to two months. The late start of the season is especially significant because these early-planting and early-harvesting areas were expected to reduce the national maize shortfall starting in July. Although farmers should have carried out their second weeding by now, they haven't even finished planting. About 40 percent of the maize area remains unplanted. Government officials and the food security community will be keenly following the pace of planting in the arable areas of the Rift Valley Province, which accounts for up to 60 percent of national long-rains output.

With the exception of the Coast Province, maize planting has not delayed significantly in most other areas of the country. Yet, crop prospects are less favorable in Eastern and Central Provinces, where up to 70 percent of planting has been completed. Although only slightly delayed, the 2003 long rains have been especially erratic after initial rains during the last week of March. Little or no rainfall has been reported in most of these areas after the onset. The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD) has reported that the crop is already under significant moisture stress and farmers may have to re-plant their crop, should the current dry spell continue beyond the middle of April.

The national maize supply has tightened significantly and is unlikely to meet national consumption needs, particularly between July and September, before the first long-rains crops will be harvested. The MoALD has attributed the imminent supply shortfall to the two-month delay in the season onset in the early supplying areas of southwestern Kenya, coupled with erratic 2003 long-rains season rainfall across several other arable areas of the country. Subsequently, maize imports may become necessary. The magnitude of such imports will only be ascertained toward the beginning of May when the outcome of the long-rains season becomes clearer.

At the moment, the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) is holding an estimated 261,000 MT tons of maize constituting 135,000 MT of Strategic Grain Reserve (SGR) stock, 90,000 MT of Government of Kenya (GoK) famine relief maize and 36,000 MT of the NCPB's own commercial grain stock. The GoK is currently building up the SGR, which at the moment is half of the target level of 270,000 MT.

1.3. Commodity Prices

As national supplies tighten maize prices have generally increased in most markets across the country. Notable exceptions include markets situated in the important short-rains districts in the marginal agricultural areas of Eastern Province, such as Machakos, and adjacent markets right up to Nairobi, where prices have predictably declined during the March harvesting period. This decline in prices is expected to be only short-lived as national maize supplies are low and won't be replenished until much later than normal during 2003, due largely to the poor start to the long-rains season. In addition, maize prices have not declined as dramatically during 2003 as usual in marginal agricultural district markets, as a result of NCPB's maize purchases there, intended to prop up post-harvest prices and farmer income.

Figure 2 is an illustration of the trend in maize prices during the past year in some of the country's key markets. Prices in Kakamega, Kitale and Nakuru markets will likely increase even more in coming months as stocks continue to diminish. The anticipated higher prices are especially worrisome for the deficit-producing pastoral, agropastoral and marginal agricultural farm households who are struggling to consolidate food security gains attained during the past two seasons.

Both pastoral households and food security practitioners have become increasingly concerned about mounting food insecurity during March, particularly in West Pokot, Baringo, Marakwet, Keiyo and southern Turkana Districts. With the exception of West Pokot District, little rainfall has been experienced in most of the other drought-affected districts, where the long-rains normally begin during the first week of April. The prognosis for the 2003 long-rains season is pessimistic in these areas. Most of these areas are widely expected to experience below-normal rainfall during most of the current season.

Food security assessments conducted in these pastoral districts during February, under the aegis of the Kenya Food Security Steering Group (KFSSG), have confirmed that pastoralists are highly food insecure. The assessment teams concluded that although successive and prolonged droughts had contributed significantly to food insecurity, increased livestock raids have had a greater negative impact by substantially undermining pastoral livelihoods and recovery prospects. Baringo, southern Turkana and Marakwet Districts have suffered the most pronounced threats to food security arising from conflict, even during periods when key production fundamentals -- water, pasture and browse -- were favorable.

Figure 3 illustrates the scale and location of food insecurity in the worst-affected pastoral districts, Baringo, Turkana and West Pokot. The Office of the President's Relief and Rehabilitation Department has responded by distributing 1,755 MT of maize and 1,800 MT of beans during January-March. This response is being carried out in collaboration with Non Governmental Organizations. The scale of the intervention will likely increase should the 2003 long-rains season continue to be unfavorable. Nevertheless, the KFSSG has emphasized that food insecurity in these districts can only be reversed in any meaningful way through a multi-faceted approach that includes institutionalization of conflict prevention mechanisms, and drought mitigation activities coupled with poverty reduction initiatives. In addition, NGO and church programs are actively providing food security support to pastoralist households in Marakwet and Keiyo Districts.

Nevertheless, most pastoralist households outside Baringo, Turkana and West Pokot Districts experienced significant respite during 2002 from the prolonged drought that began in late 1998 and extended close to the end of 2001. During 2002 and early 2003 pastoralists experienced significant growth in their livestock herds and livestock health has generally improved in tandem with rising in most markets. Last year also witnessed a period of significant reversal in the previously high rates of child malnutrition across the majority of pastoral districts. Against this background, a favorable 2003 long-rains season remains central to the continuation of a long road to recovery.

Pastoralists in these areas are already optimistic of an improvement in their food security during the 2003 long-rains season. Some localized areas of Mandera, Marsabit, Tana River Isiolo and Turkana Districts received unexpected rainfall during March. This has brightened prospects that the recovery process that began toward the end of 2001 will be further consolidated should these rains continue and spread more widely. Unfortunately, the March-May climate outlook forecast for Kenya indicates that most of the pastoral areas will have below-normal rainfall.

THE FUND FOR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

Implementation of projects under the Fund for Disaster Preparedness has commenced in Turkana and Mandera Districts, in addition to Isiolo District where food for work activities have been underway since December. The National Project Review Committee (NPRC) has approved thirteen projects for implementation in Turkana and fifteen projects in Mandera. In Marsabit District, the Fund for Disaster Preparedness budgets have been approved and preparations are underway for the training of food monitors. Budgets for Garissa and Ijara Districts have been received and are under review.

In the drought-prone districts, a sub-committee of the District Steering Committee (DSG) identifies the communities that are most food insecure and vulnerable to drought. These communities identify the projects that are most likely to contribute to reducing the impact of drought. Women are particularly encouraged to engage in the decision-making process, through elected community rehabilitation/development committees. These committees are an extension of the Relief Committees that were established during the emergency operation, and serve to ensure full and democratic community representation but also accountability at this level. In Mandera this has proved problematic, as the traditional decision-making structures often exclude women's direct participation, but elsewhere the model works well. Participants on the scheme are selected based on their poverty levels.

Most of the projects selected so far focus on community-based water resource management including the development or rehabilitation of pans, shallow wells and canals, and the de-silting or expansion of dams. Small-scale water projects reduce the impact of drought in three main ways. First, the migration distances in search of water are reduced, and less mobile small stock can be preserved. Second, women spend less time fetching water and can devote the time saved to other activities. Third, the water sources are permitting an increasing amount of kitchen gardening, which helps to diversify income and food consumption, especially for poor households without large herds.

Typically, the project duration is 4-5 months. Given the nature of the projects, most of the work must be accomplished in the dry season. Fifty percent of the food aid is delivered in advance of full project implementation and the remainder on successful completion. Basic hand tools and construction supplies are also provided by the project and supplemented by communities.