26 September, Lesotho. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has made the first ever direct purchase of maize from small-scale farmers in Lesotho.

The WFP paid around US$2,800 to 20 semi-subsistence farmers from Qacha's Nek for eight metric tons of their maize. This is an enormous sum in a country where over a third of the population lives on less than US$1 a day.

Despite the country's worst drought in 30 years, these farmers had a maize surplus from using conservation farming techniques.

In the impoverished district of Qacha's Nek, the maize will help feed thousands of poor and hungry children from local primary schools. The WFP will save US$45 per ton through buying locally rather than from South Africa.

The farmers had learnt about conservation farming through a WFP assisted food-for-training programme.

More than 1,800 farmers across Lesotho have been introduced to conservation farming with the support of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Ministry of Agriculture and the Growing Nations of the Evangelical Church of Lesotho. Conservation farming increases yields and decreases environmental degradation.

These benefits could not have come at a better time after the Government of Lesotho declared a state of emergency on 9 July following the worst drought in three decades; and at a time of recurrent crop failures, severe poverty, chronic hunger and the impact of the third highest rate of HIV/AIDS in the world.

Reports by the FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission and the Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Committee survey estimate that around 400,000 people need immediate humanitarian assistance. This figure could rise to 550,000 during the peak of the crisis in the first three months of 2008.

Between now and the next maize harvest in April 2008, the WFP plans to distribute food to around 260,000 vulnerable people in Lesotho. Other humanitarian and government organisations will aim to reach the others in need of assistance.