Effects of HIV/AIDS on food security

Since the first case of the Acquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was diagnosed in 1981 in the United States, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has spread throughout the world. In some rural communities in Africa, HIV/AIDS is now resulting in labour shortages for both farm and domestic work.

Besides the loss of AIDS patients through sickness and subsequent death, family members have to divert time to care for the sick and eventually neglect farm or off-farm activities. This results in loss of potential income. The situation is aggravated in farming systems in which division of labour is based on gender. With the death of a spouse, the widow or widower does not necessarily take over the work of the deceased spouse.

Labour-intensive farming systems with a low level of mechanisation and agricultural input use are particularly vulnerable to the impact of HIV/AIDS as the economic return to labour tends to be low. In addition, traditional customs like the extended time of mourning, where no farming activities can be carried out, can have an adverse effect on the availability of labour during periods in which deaths are frequent.

Crop production

The impact of HIV/AIDS on crop production relates to a reduction in land use, a decline in crop yields and a decline in the range of crops grown. The reduction in land use is attributed to a number of factors which have occurred as a direct result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The effect of HIV/AIDS in reducing the number of family members needed to cultivate larger areas of land, has led to substantial reductions in land use in many communities.

In some communities, where land tenure and inheritance traditions favour male inheritance, the effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic may be especially severe. As increasing numbers of women are left widowed, and their right to land is already constrained by traditional inheritance customs, their access to land extremely difficult.

HIV/AIDS has also affected several other areas of agriculture such as reduction in soil fertility, increase in soil and diseases and, changes in crop practices.

Reduction in soil fertility appears to be due, in part, to reluctance by farmers to carry out long-term soil conservation measures because such measures do not yield an immediate income and are labour demanding in an environment in which the farming system is already short of human resources.

Increase in soil and diseases refers to the increasing incidence of pest and plant diseases. This phenomenon occurs in crop production systems which are highly dependent on farm labour. The loss of labour, as a result of AIDS, has reduced the amount of time, care and cash required to effectively carry out practices such as the use of pesticide by small scale farmers.

In the cocoa-banana system, the banana weevil which destroys banana plantations, and fungus infection which infects cocoa plantations are affecting yields. Banana weevils used to be controlled either by traditional means, which are labour-intensive, or with the use of chemicals.

A shortage of human resources hinders farmers, who do not have the financial resources to purchase chemicals from controlling weevils using traditional methods. Similarly, in the cocoa plantations, increasing infestations of fungi are believed to be symptomatic of poor cultural practices.

The reduction of soils, lack of labour, the high incidence of pests and diseases, are at least partly attributable to the frequent deaths and sickness of farmers and their children caused by AIDS. In order to adapt to factors caused by AIDS farmers have responded by changing their cropping patterns. In some farming systems this has resulted in a shift away from the cultivation of cash crops such as cocoa in order to concentrate all available labour on the production of subsistence crops like sweet potatoes and cassava in most part of Africa.

Impact on livestock farming

The effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on livestock-raising practices has been felt in several ways: cattle are frequently sold to pay medical bills and funeral expenses and decrease in labour availability result in lower levels of care for livestock. Among pastoralists, there has been a tendency for herd sizes to become smaller. As with sedentary cattle keepers, people who fall sick sell their animals to pay for drugs, hospitalisation and other expenses.

The effect of HIV/AIDS on extension work in areas of high epidemic incidence may be two-fold: in one case local extension workers may lose all of their working time as a result of the disease. Staff members may be frequently absent from work, attending funerals and caring for sick relatives. In some cases, extension messages have to be revised to take into account the impact of the disease on agricultural systems, i.e., the shortage of labour, changes in farmers’ needs and priorities both in crop and livestock production systems.

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