“We try to work ourselves out of the job”

[ Interview with Susana Rico, WFP Country Director, Afghanistan ]

Ms. Rico, how much food aid did the WFP supply to Afghanistan last year? How much are you currently distributing?
Last year we distributed 235 000 metric tons. That amounted to about 8.3 percent of the country’s estimated cereal requirement. This year we expect to reach more or less the same level. Of course this will depend mainly on how good the next harvest will turn out, and that’s anyone’s guess for the time being. The original plan was 320 000 metric tons, but we have lowered that to 260 000 metric tons. However, as last year, we expect to need slightly less.

Last year the WFP Emergency Operation for Afghanistan was succeeded by the Relief and Recovery Operation. What has changed in practice?
During an emergency we maximise the plans in order to cover as many people in need as possible. Essentially, the information we had during the emergency operation was rather scant. For example, for 2002 we had planned to distribute about 500 000 metric tons, but in the end it was considerably less. Under the Recovery Operation, of course, we continue to assist those who are still in crisis, such as internally displaced people, returning refugees or disadvantaged urban people. But now most of the interventions are targeted, based on the needs in the area in which we deliver the food. We also moved towards a more development-type intervention. For example, food for work aims at building assets for a community. It requires that communities state what their needs are, and what they can invest in terms of labour.

The 2003 harvest in Afghanistan was very good. Why is so much food aid still necessary?
Of course the good harvest benefited large segments of the population. However, specific groups like widows or disabled persons may not benefit immediately from better food availability in the market, because they still cannot participate in a regular labour market. Also, there are people who lack access to markets because of where they live. That renders them more vulnerable. These are the people we target.

How does targeting take place?
Any community making a bid for food assistance is first assessed in terms of what food needs they have. Then – with an implementing partner, generally an NGO – a project will be developed with the aim to build assets for the community, like irrigation systems or reforestation. During implementation we continuously monitor the distribution of food to make sure that it gets to the people that were intended.

That must be very demanding in a country as big as Afghanistan, particularly in view of the many remote areas. How do you make sure that aid is not diverted?
In those places that we can access to deliver food, we are also in a position to monitor. In some places where the security situation prevents us from intervening directly, we resort to local NGOs or the government to assist us in the needs assessment as well as the monitoring of distribution.

Does it happen that these partners misapply aid deliveries?
Of course it does. Therefore we have to constantly monitor and send teams into the field to speak to the beneficiaries and ensure they receive the food. According to the monitoring reports in 2003, we can safely say that we were successful in up to 98 percent of all cases.

So you would say that corruption is not a big problem . . .
I would say that corruption in the field of food aid needs to be constantly monitored. But I don’t think that it has a large impact, precisely because we try the best to ensure that food is not diverted.

How do you prevent your target groups from becoming dependent on food aid as happened in other countries, for instance Ethiopia?
Essentially by connecting the interventions with the creation of some type of asset. There are no blanket food distributions except to IDP camps. But even in the case of internally displaced people we try to give food for training, so that they at least acquire some skills for the food they receive. Generally, well targeted food aid serves as a safety net. If there are other safety nets in place, food aid is not necessarily the only solution. For example, if there is sufficient creation of employment that pays better than the commodities, people will spontaneously shift towards the employment schemes and pull themselves out of food aid.

Last year cereal prices tumbled in some regions in Afghanistan. Some sources even claimed prices fell below production costs. Did food aid contribute to this decrease?
Firstly, in 2003 we saw an increase in the cultivation of cereals in Afghanistan. Never before had so much land been cultivated in the country. So the argument is not valid that food aid has worked as a disincentive to plant wheat. Secondly, in the last two years, we consistently assessed the market prices of wheat because we take it as an indicator of whether our intervention is appropriate or not. We found that, except for a few isolated months, the market prices have remained stable in 2002 and even more so in 2003. Of course, in view of the good harvest in 2003 there has been some lowering of prices. But that was not significant, prices certainly did not fall below production costs.

The joint FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Report for 2003 says that “prices of wheat have fallen sharply” . . .
We have continued to monitor the prices and the decrease was not significant. If you take the input parity prices, that is the ratio of prices farmers have to pay to prices they receive, the price of wheat in Afghanistan has been relatively stable in the past two years. Of course, if you compare prices of 2002/2003 with prices during the drought in the years before you see a considerable difference. But you have to remember that during the drought prices were artificially high. In a draft report on the impact of food aid on the market, the World Bank recently concluded that there were large volumes of private sector imports into Afghanistan from 2000 to early 2003 and it suggests that food aid did not have substantial effects on domestic market prices in this period.

But media have quoted farmers who said they couldn’t compete with WFP wheat sold on local markets?
Two things have to be kept in mind: Firstly, WFP is not only supplying wheat. The basket consists of a number of commodities like wheat, rice, sugar, pulses, salt and a wheat-soya blend. Secondly, food aid is not brought to the market. It is delivered to hospitals, to schools, in the form of biscuits to children, to IDP camps. Only a very small proportion may be monetized by the beneficiaries so that they can pay the transport of the rest or buy other consumables they may need.

I’ve been told that last year, after the good harvest in the northern provinces, WFP sold its high-energy biscuits on local markets to get rid of them before the expiry date. Is that true?
No, absolutely not. We barely met the demand for school feedings; we can hardly get the biscuits fast enough to satisfy the needs of the programme.

According to Christian Aid, WFP food aid has encouraged opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan . . .That seems to be one of the most appealing arguments against food aid, but it does not hold much water. Firstly, last year the cultivation of wheat as well as of poppies increased in Afghanistan. But in the case of wheat the increase was even larger than in the case of poppies. Secondly, even farmers who plant poppies will also plant wheat for their own consumption. And thirdly, planting poppies potentially increases a farmer’s income by a factor of 28. From an economic point of view, it’s not necessary for a farmer that wheat prices go down to take the decision to plant poppies. If he decides to do so he would have done so based on considerations beyond the mere price of wheat.

How much of WFP aid is purchased locally?
In 2002 we planned local procurements of 5000 metric tons of wheat. After six months we found that we were only able to buy 500 tons. However, following the bumper harvest in 2003, together with the government, we considered whether local procurement would be a suitable course of action. But in June 2003 the government decided that the local procurement WFP normally would have undertaken would not be beneficial to the population, pointing out that a large share of the consumers were benefiting from the slightly lower prices. In agreement with the government, however, we decided to undertake an exercise in local procurement again in November 2003. We recently sent out a tender to buy 10 000 metric tons of wheat. I am indeed looking forward to Afghanistan having sufficient production for us to procure more locally. But in order for that to happen a number of conditions must be fulfilled, for example, farmers and traders must become familiar with international bidding processes. Storage, clearing and bagging facilities must be improved as well as laboratories to test the quality of commodities.

Some people claim WFP is too closely connected with the seed industry, especially in the United States, to really promote local and regional procurement . . .
The United States is not the only WFP donor . . .

But the biggest . . .
Well, for our operation that is not true. Currently, our largest donor is Japan, followed by the European Union and the United States. Some of these donors give cash for local or regional commodity procurement. So, whenever feasible, we do that.

How big is the share of purchases from neighbouring states?
In 2003 we bought about 100 000 metric tons in the region, equalling about 40 percent of total supplies.

What do you think of changing from food aid to cash?
Whenever it is feasible we do that. For example, we have very recently agreed with UNHCR that returning refugees will no longer get a food basket but cash instead. Only those returning refugees who go to food-insecure areas will qualify for food packages. In Afghanistan it makes perfect sense to supply people with cash rather than food, provided they have access to markets. In remote areas, beneficiaries often prefer food aid, because if they were to buy food on the market the costs of transport would exceed the cash aid. So we must try to help rebuild the infrastructure in order to lower these costs, for example through food for work.

Ms. Rico, how long will WFP have to stay in Afghanistan?
WFP’s mandate is to work itself out of the job, to become redundant wherever we are. In that respect several things must obviously happen, particularly in a country that looks back on 23 years of war. We use food aid as much as we can to build assets that will allow communities to stand on their own. But there are still rural and urban vulnerable populations with little access to economic development opportunities and a sizeable population of internally displaced people, who will need support at least until they go back to their communities of origin. So the question of how long we will have to stay in Afghanistan depends largely on how fast the political and economic situation generally improves.

Questions by Tillmann Elliesen.