A family's quest to find enough to eat

DOLPA, Nepal - In Nepal's Himalayan communities, above the deep river valleys that bring life to those who live along the banks, populations are rising and the land is getting drier.

Families that farm there are only able to produce enough food to sustain themselves for three to six months of the year.

The lean season has just begun in Dolpa district, and in the hillside village of Jhuphal, Dantakumari Dangi is worried about how she will be able to feed her three children.

"I don't know why it doesn't rain. It's all about the sky," she told China Daily.

"Maybe there isn't enough water in the sky. They say they had a lot of rain in the past. But the people are cutting down trees now as the population is growing. Maybe that's the reason we have so little rainfall."

Dangi lives at an altitude of 2,987 meters on the edge of the Tibetan plateau, four days' walk from the Chinese border. The area is ranked one of the worst in the world for food security by the UN World Food Program (WFP), due to its inaccessibility and harsh terrain.

Government figures say the food deficit has tripled in recent years, with most of the increase since a 2009 drought.

"What we grow lasts us less than six months," said Dangi as her 12-year-old son plowed the field behind her to plant millet.

"We buy rice from the Food Corporation and work for the World Food Program as laborers in exchange for rice."

The WFP pays each family 4 kg of rice for each day of labor, for digging roads or irrigation canals. But these projects don't run all year round and are now under threat of closure due to funding cuts. "Maybe we can only reach a quarter of our beneficiaries next year," WFP Nepal Country Representative Nicole Menage told China Daily .

"Yes, we feel there is a risk that some will go hungry," she said.

The organization is still $21 million short of the budget needed to work in the 22 districts of Nepal that do not have enough food this year. Food has been scarce as long as Dangi can remember, but it has been getting worse recently as snow is falling until later in the year, and the rains during the growing season are less abundant.

"Rainfall and snowfall patterns in the areas have been changing over the years, worsening the food production scenario," District Agriculture Extension Officer Hemraj Adhikari told China Daily.

The rains that do arrive with the June monsoons are a mixed blessing. They water the region's meager crops during the growing season, but make access more difficult for delivery of food while the people wait for harvest time.

Access is only by air, or by a four-day walk to the nearest usable road. The rains reduce the footpaths to mud, unusable by people or the mules they use to deliver goods. And the downpours often prevent aircraft from landing at the area's small airstrips.

The poverty in the region also means low literacy. Children walk hours to fetch drinking water, instead of going to school. Life expectancy is just 44 years. Almost half of all children under the age of five are malnourished, and around 75 percent never grow to their full size, according to the WFP.

Dangi appears to understand little of weather patterns or program budgets. But her ambitions for future generations are clear: "our wish is that our children could have food and education - a dream of all Dolpalis", she said.

Pratibha Tuladhar contributed to this story.

China Daily

(China Daily 08/01/2011 page11)