By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 13 1999 (IPS)

Honduras faces food security problems for the next two years due to the damage caused by Hurricane Mitch, which devastated the country’s farmlands in late 1998, says the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Mitch caused damage estimated at 881 million dollars to the agricultural production and productivity sectors, according to a FAO report.

Unprecedented river levels caused widespread flooding and the torrential rains that accompanied Mitch provoked numerous mudslides that, in turn, destroyed highways and bridges in rural zones. Small farmers were left almost entirely cut off and unable to harvest and store their crops.

Six months after the hurricane. a tour by experts from FAO and the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) reserved judgement on the final estimates of damage as it remained impossible to gain ready access to many areas.

The FAO representative in Tegucigalpa, Emiliano Alarcon, said however that losses to the grain and bean harvests equalled about 262,000 tonnes, to which must be added 40 percent of the banana and plantain harvests.

“We have planned for every food emergency…although we must accept that we are at nearly zero reserves,” commented Minister of Agriculture, Guillermo Alvarado.

For this reason, Honduras would need to import at least 576,000 tonnes of grain and beans during the next five months, he said. Imports of corn, the main food staple, would amount to some 236,000 tonnes, while 40,000 tonnes of beans and rice were also needed.

Aid received until now represented 85,000 tonnes.

“The hurricane here caught us unprepared,” said Filomena Chavez, a typical Honduran farmer from the small village of La Montana in the southern department of Valle, where basic grains and fruits are grown.

The road accessing La Montana is cracked and in very poor condition. The hurricane formed a natural lake nearby, in a zone where neither river nor stream existed before Mitch arrived.

The FAO study showed that the southern and Atlantic zones sustained the worst damage in terms of agriculture and livestock. The northeast department of Olanacho, the main supplier of grain for domestic consumption, was also hit hard.

Earlier this year, the WFP distributed food by helicopter to Olanacho due to famine in towns like Esquipulas del Norte, which still cannot be reached by land.

“Many of the roads that lead to remote rural zones have disappeared and will probably be the last to be reconstructed. This affects mobility, increasing the cost of transportation and consequently reducing, directly and indirectly, the income of the poor population,” FAO reported.

FAO’s Alarcon announced that the agency had outlined a proposal for 11 projects totalling 8.5 million dollars to assist the government in the coordination of urgent aid to the agricultural sector.

The effort is an attempt to rebuild the production capacity of small grain and dairy farmers, as well as plantain growers in the valleys of Sula and La Mosquitia on the Atlantic coast, he said.

Honduras has two growing seasons; the first starts in April-May and ends June-July, while the second begins in August-September and runs to October-November.

The country was in this final phase in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch appeared, causing the loss of 200,000 metric tonnes of corn – about 30 percent of the normal yearly production.

Honduran farmers also lost 7,800 tonnes of rice, 35,000 of beans, 19,000 of sorghum and some 200,000 of platanos and bananas. FAO estimated that the recovery of the last two crops, which were the export pillars of this country, would take two years. (FIN/IPS/tra-tm/ag/dv/ks/mk/99)

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