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Honduras

Maize in the tank causes increasing food prices

Benigno Lopez pours maize into the reserve silo in the village, but the tank is close to being empty due to the poor harvest last year.

”We can no longer afford to buy enough maize, rice and beans on the market as prices are too high. We eat less than before and our children suffer because we cannot afford to give them enough food,” says Adrianna Esperanza Velascas from the village Barbasco in western Honduras.

Her husband owns a small piece of land but as most other poors in Honduras he cannot produce enough food to feed his family of six. Thus they have to supplement with food they buy on the market.

But since the end of 2007, prices of maize, beans and rice which are basic foodstuffs of the Hondurans have increased by up to 100 per cent. Two thirds of the population in Honduras live below the poverty rate and to them the situation is critical, say DanChurchAid’s partners in Honduras.

The situation is deteriorating

”What is happening at the moment is that the poor families reduce their daily intake of food because they simply cannot afford to buy the basic foodstuff any more,” Francisco Machado says. He is head of the Association of Organizations, ASONOG, one of DanChurchAid’s cooperation partners in Honduras. Read more about the work in Honduras

One of the consequences of the high prices of food is that the number of mal- or undernourished children is steadily increasing at the moment. Honduras is already among the countries in Latin America which has most malnourished children. And Francisco Machado predicts that the situation will deteriorate even further during the next months.

”Last year’s harvest is about to run out and next harvest is not until October and November. Therefore we will see a worsening of the situation during the next months as the price of maize will increase even more due to the raising demand,” he says.

The quality of about one third of last year’s harvest is so poor that it cannot be eaten.

Food in the tank in the US

According to the UN Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO), the main reason for the increasing prices in Honduras is the increasing amount of basic food such as maize and sugar cane used as biofuel, and that Honduras in spite of a large capacity does not produce food enough – nor maize which is a basic foodstuff - for own use.

Honduras is thus dependent on import of among others maize from other countries, mainly from the US. But as a growing part of the American production of maize ends in the petrol tank – meaning that it is transformed into biofuel – the market price of American maize has increased heavily.

According to FAO at least half of the poor families in Honduras had problems in procuring enough maize and beans in April 2007, and the situation has deteriorated considerably during the first five months of 2008.

Maize reserves are running out

With assistance from DanChurchAid’s partners some villages have established local maize reserves in order to avoid becoming dependent on having to buy maize on the market. But last year a delayed rainy season caused the loss of about one third of the harvest.

”Our maize reserves are running out and prices on the market are sky high,” says Benigno Lopez, a farmer from Portilla, a mountain village in western Honduras.

The family is still ably to eat maize tortillas and beans twice a day but they fear the coming months without any harvest.

The farmers’ only chance of procuring money and thus food until they are able to harvest again is to work as day labourers in the fields of the big farmers where they may earn around DKK 10 a day. A salary which is far from sufficient when the price of a sack of beans with 50 kilos now costs around DKK 350 and a sack of maize costs between DKK 60 and 80.

By Anne Lund Petersen, alp@dca.dk