Food crisis in Afghanistan: the human cost

In Afghanistan, some families are reportedly selling children as young as nine into marriage. This is the reality of the global food crisis that we in Britain experience as a moderate increase in prices. A BMS worker in Afghanistan shares her experiences.

I visited my neighbours this week – another large Afghan family living in two rooms. Their income comes through the bread that they make at home and sell in the bazaar each day. Labour intensive work – three women kneading the dough for about 150 naan breads each day, cooking the bread on the side of an outdoor bread oven with their eyes streaming from the thick smoke, then the men taking it in a wheelbarrow to the bazaar to sell. The mother told me that they had stopped making bread. “Why?” I asked, “Your bread is the best I’ve tasted”. “There’s no point,” she replied. “I now make a profit of half an Afghani per naan” (about half a pence). So a whole family’s labour would bring 75p profit a day. She was so downhearted.

The staff in our project visited the village we work in two hours away. They grow some wheat there – not enough to feed the whole village with but some. Rain was late arriving and, although we were happy it came, there has been none since. They sent their animals into the mountains to find grass but they returned hungry. The villagers said if more rain doesn’t come in the next week the wheat will spoil so they will just send their goats to eat it. They don’t know where they will get wheat for their bread from. But most of the men this week left for Iran to see if they could find work there – they know things are getting desperate.

These lives are all being affected by the global increase in the price of food and also the fragility of life in a country which is incredibly weather dependent and has little infrastructure. In the UK it is estimated that the average weekly shop for a family of four has increased by £15 in the last year. Not an insignificant amount, but one that most people can absorb. Here in Afghanistan, a month’s supply of wheat for an average Afghan family now costs the same as a total monthly wage for a civil servant. A majority of the country don’t earn anywhere near this amount – the cloud of despair is heavy.

The causes of this hike in prices are global and complex. The UN is holding talks and has set up a Task Force to help. Economists and world leaders are discussing solutions – leave the market to itself, give incentives to producers to boost production, boost the incomes of the poor. Price fluctuations are unavoidable but what I see here is that people are so poor that a small rise becomes a life and death situation.