HIV/AIDS will take deathly toll on farm workers

HIV/AIDS will kill 20 percent of southern Africa's agricultural workers by 2020, researchers said on Thursday, possibly threatening food production in a region already facing frequent shortages.

But with massive unemployment across the continent, loss of earning power after families lose their adult breadwinners could be more of a problem than a lack of labour, they say.

"It's not as simple as to say that there will be a one fifth reduction of the crop," HIV/AIDS expert, Smangaliso Hllengwa said at a World Health Organisation conference on HIV/AIDS and nutrition in Durban.

"But it's obviously going to have a significant impact," said Hllengwa, who is an adviser to NEPAD, the programme for Africa's economic revival.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation echoed NEPAD's figures, researchers at the conference said, predicting 25 percent of agricultural labourers will die by 2025 based on national HIV infection rates and local surveys.

Twenty-five million Africans are infected with HIV. But in the region's largest food producer, South Africa, farmers say they have already lost 20 percent of their workforce in the last five years alone, but production is unaffected and they now expect the largest staple maize crop in a decade.

"We are losing workers at a very high rate," maize grower Bully Botma, chairman of producer body Grain South Africa, told reporters. "But there are so many people looking for jobs, it isn't impacting on production."

With a third of South Africans out of work, many in rural areas, work is much sought after.

But for dead farm workers' families - which some aid workers estimate will total as many as 17 million people by 2020 - the loss of earnings could be devastating, experts said.

"The problem may not be labour," said Stuart Gillespie, research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. "It may be cash."

Widespread regional shortages in 2002 led to some predicting an HIV/AIDS-induced "new variant famine", with not enough labour available to feed populations.

But so far those fears look not to have been realised, although some fear drought could lead to serious shortages again in Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and elsewhere this year.

"It's still a possible hypothesis," said Gillespie. "It didn't happen then, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. It could happen in 2005. It could happen in 2008."

In some cases, researchers say, HIV/AIDS could reduce rural incomes, as hard-up subsistence farmers drive down wages by working more, others cease employing workers because of the cost of medicine, food or because family members have ceased earning.

"People get sick and they cannot work, and if you cannot work there is no money for food or school fees," 30-year-old mother Ziphi Mzila told reporters in Msinga, three hours drive from Durban, South Africa's biggest port.

She was diagnosed HIV-positive in 2000 after HIV/AIDS-related illnesses forced her to quit growing and selling tomatoes, the main way in which she fed her three children, the youngest of whom she suspects also has the virus.

In the nearby hospital, Dr Tony Moll said HIV/AIDS was making existing problems worse, with infants in particular suffering.

"One of the main things is children with deficiencies," he said. "That was here before HIV/AIDS...HIV/AIDS has just exacerbated it."