JOHANNESBURG (AlertNet) – A severe drought in South Africa is hurting efforts to stave off a food crisis threatening more than six million people in southern Africa by pushing grain prices beyond the reach of aid agencies.

Relief workers say expectations of a slump in South Africa’s key maize harvest spell grim news for agencies tackling food shortages in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique and Malawi as prices soar.

“At the moment we cannot purchase maize in South Africa because it is too expensive,” said Richard Lee, spokesman for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).

South African maize accounted for about 62 percent of the WFP's needs last year. The food body bought 309,000 tonnes of South African maize, compared with total global maize purchases of 493,000 tonnes.

The WFP is turning to international donor supplies and is now planning purchases from South America as supplies from its other source of regional food in Zambia also reach their limit.

Agencies and NGOs have also had to source food from outside South Africa, long a major exporter to the region because of its advanced commercial agricultural sector.

The loss of guaranteed South African supplies has made the urgent aid effort in the region more expensive and logistically more difficult, aid agencies said.

It also reduces the flexibility and speed that agencies can operate in the face of dire need.

Rising prices for South African foodstuffs have also cut the amount of food that regional governments can buy for their people. This in turn has made them even more reliant on outside help.

“Governments in Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and Zambia can only afford to buy less food… They, like us now, totally rely on donors from abroad,” said Steffan Horstmeier, regional programme officer at World Vision.

15 MILLION SOUTH AFRICANS FACE SHORTAGES

Experts say there is little chance of a bumper harvest in South Africa this summer season.

Some parts of South Africa have suffered their worst drought since the end of World War One. The drought has played havoc with the summer planting season, which should have begun over the last two months.

The government in Pretoria has declared six out of nine provinces disaster zones and emergency officials have said that as many as 15 million South Africans are at risk themselves of food shortages.

The most affected provinces have been the maize growing regions of Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. In Free State, the leading producer, only half of the usual crop had been planted by December.

A string of South African agricultural bodies have highlighted the dangers caused by drought.

Grains South Africa has warned there is the risk that there is not enough surplus expected from this season’s crop to supply Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and Malawi.

Meanwhile, the South African Chamber of Milling predicts that four million tonnes of white maize will be produced this season, which would meet South African demand but leave little surplus for export.

The Crop Estimates Committee of South Africa’s Department of Agriculture estimates that 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of maize have so far been planted by commercial farmers, compared with close to 3.2 million hectares (7.9 million acres) the previous season.

This will be the lowest since 1940 and has caused prices on South African agricultural futures exchanges to rocket.

Even badly needed rains that fell across South Africa in late January might be too late for crops and may need to be sustained to make up for the earlier dry spell, experts say. Farmers have already lost livestock.

“Rain is never too late, but we need more to break the drought,” Willie Auret, the president of farm union Agri North West, told the South African Press Association.

OTHER COUNTRIES HIT

Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland are also at the sharp end of a drought, made more acute in Lesotho and Swaziland because of their traditional reliance on South African food.

The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that of the 6.5 million people vulnerable to food shortages, some 5.5 million are in President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, which is in political and economic turmoil.

Most Zimbabwean rural households have depleted the previous harvest’s stocks, forcing many to severely reduce their food consumption or skip meals altogether, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, a USAID-funded venture.

A spokeswoman for USAID said the total number of food insecure people in Zimbabwe could rise to around 7.5 million before next year, or more than half the population.

Washington issued a security notice this month advising its citizens to leave Zimbabwe, where “the humanitarian crisis is expected to worsen in coming months.”

The WFP’s Lee said that 500,000 to 600,000 were at risk in the landlocked state of Lesotho.

“Unfortunately the situation in Lesotho is getting worse,” Lee said.