Cambodian kids enjoy last free breakfast after mounting food prices force UN to end program

Cambodian children eat rice in their classroom during a school breakfast, supported by the World Food Program, in Kampong Speu province, about 45 kilometers, (28 miles) west of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on April 29, 2008. By the end of the month, the 450,000 Cambodian students who depend on a free breakfast, dished out daily courtesy of the U.N. World Food Program, will become the latest victims of soaring global food prices. (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

2008-06-06

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Students at a rural elementary school in Cambodia enjoyed their last free breakfasts in class Friday, after the United Nations World Food Program stopped supplying rice and other food because of soaring global prices.

In addition to directly providing nutrition for children, the WFP breakfasts gave parents an incentive to send them to school rather than to work in the fields, or to have them stay home to look after younger siblings.

The free breakfast program in Cambodia began in 2000 and has recently been benefiting about 450,000 rural students. The World Food Program feeds almost 89 million people worldwide, including 58.8 million children.

The principal of Choumpou Proek school, about 43 miles (70 kilometers) west of the capital, Phnom Penh, said his 612 students enjoyed a final free breakfast of steamed yellow split peas with salt _ minus rice.

The school's rice supply ran out May 27, so staff cooked the last 64 pounds (29 kilograms) of peas for the students, Nheng Vorn said by telephone from the school in the rice farming village in Kampong Speu province. The WFP also provided soybeans and cooking oil.

Even though the school is in a rice-growing area, the farms cannot produce enough of the staple to feed the entire community. WFP selected schools in poorest communities for the breakfast program.

The U.N.'s food agency said breakfast stocks at the 1,344 rural schools under its program would run out before mid-June. WFP stopped sending rice supplies in March.
The cutoff began after five local suppliers defaulted on contracts to provide rice because they could get a higher price elsewhere, program officials said.

The price of rice tripled in the first four months of the year as the world food crisis deepened.

Soaring fuel prices have driven up the costs of fertilizers, farm vehicle use and transporting food to markets. Speculation and increased consumption of meat and dairy goods in China, India and other booming developing nations are also considered major factors in the food price hikes.

About six miles (10 kilometers) from Nheng Vorn's school, Sangkum Seksa school principal Tan Sak said his students have been eating breakfasts of steamed peas with salt since their WFP rice ran out two weeks ago.

The school's kitchen will shut down next week when the supply of peas runs out, he said.

Similar situations were occurring around the country and all over the developing world.

In Burundi, Kenya and Zambia, hundreds of thousands of people face cuts in food rations after June. In Iraq, 500,000 recipients will likely lose food aid. In Yemen, it's 320,000 households, including children and the sick.

Coco Ushiyama, WFP's acting director for Cambodia, said in an interview last month that resumption of the free breakfast program would depend on donors' contributions in the future.

She said it was «really a tough decision» to end it in favor of continuing programs benefiting orphans of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, who are in a «more desperate need» of food aid.

She also expressed concern that the end of free breakfasts could reverse gains already made in trying to improve education for rural children.

At the two schools, the principals said student attendance rates were stable so far.

Nheng Vorn, the principal at Choumpou Proek, said he has been meeting with village leaders and families to encourage children to keep going to school, even though the free breakfasts were coming to an end.

«All we can do is hope to get more rice, but that does not depend on us because prices on the global market are still very high,» he said.

It was not immediately clear if the breakfast program could be resumed with new funding, and WFP officials in Cambodia were not available to comment Friday.

Food aid programs in Asia, Africa cut because of rising food prices

Monday, May 26, 2008
The Associated Press

KAMPONG SPEU, Cambodia: At dawn in a ramshackle elementary school in rural Cambodia, the children think of only one thing: their stomachs. They anxiously await the steaming buckets of free rice delivered to their desks.

But by the end of the month, they will no longer get free breakfast from the U.N. World Food Program. About 450,000 Cambodian students will become the latest victims of soaring global food prices.

Five local suppliers have defaulted on contracts to provide rice because they can get a higher price elsewhere, program officials say. Prices of rice have tripled on the global market since December.

Faced with a shortfall of 13,000 metric tons (14,330 US tons) of rice and more pressing needs, the World Food Program stopped the free breakfasts in March. The schools' remaining stocks are expect to run out in the coming days. That will leave students without what was often the best meal they got all day.

"I feel hopeless," said Boeurn Srey Leak, a 15-year-old in sixth grade.

Rich countries have pledged US$469 million (€300 million) for food aid to address what is expected to be a US$755 million (€486 million) deficit, due to food prices that have risen 76 percent since December. The U.S., already the largest provider of food aid, is expected to contribute almost a third of that money. If Congress approves, the U.S. will contribute US$770 million (€454 million) more to be available after Oct. 1.

But the money will not arrive in time to save some food programs from being cut or ended. The World Food Program feeds almost 89 million people worldwide, including 58.8 million children.

"I don't think there is single program that doesn't have some kind of concerns because they have to scale down," said Susana Rico, a World Food Program official. "The majority of countries will suffer some kind of cutbacks in rations or programs in the next three to five months."

The numbers are grim. In Burundi, Kenya and Zambia, hundreds of thousands of people face cuts in food rations after June. In Iraq, 500,000 recipients will likely lose food aid. In Yemen, it's 320,000 households, including children and the sick.

Private aid agencies based in the U.S. also said food price hikes are hurting their projects.

Mercy Corps will likely distribute 20 percent less food to Iraqi refugees in Syria and serve 12 percent fewer Colombian families fleeing violence in the countryside. World Vision may stop helping 1.5 million people — nearly a quarter of the number it serves — because of rising food prices and pledged donations not yet delivered. At least a third are children.

In Cambodia, the free breakfasts that started in 2000 have made children visibly healthier, said Nheng Vorn, the principal of Choumpou Proek School, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of the capital Phnom Penh.

"They are more focused on lessons, and their reading ability has improved subsequently," he noted.

But principals at many such rural schools don't have the money to replace the breakfast program. Girls in particular will be at risk of dropping out because families need them at home to work in the field or help raise siblings, said World Food Program Cambodia director Thomas Keusters. Children in Cambodia often start school late and repeat grades a lot, he said.

"It's not uncommon to have a girl in grade five or six who is already 15 or 16 years old," Keusters said. "We are paying them to come to school. I'm very concerned about them because I have no rice."

About 10 kilometers (6 miles) away from Choumpou Proek school, the students of Sangkum Seksa school devour hearty portions of rice, peas and sardines in the morning. The school has only 10 rooms, housed in two faded yellow concrete buildings. Some students go barefoot.

"I can only feel pity for them," said the principal, Tan Sak. "I have no solution for them after the current stock is used up."

Before the free breakfasts, many students left school before noon so they could eat lunch at home.

"I had difficulty sitting in the class because my stomach was growling," Rim Channa, a 13-year-old fifth-grader.

Now, once again, all they will have for breakfast is the tart fruit from the nearby tamarind trees.
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Associated Press Environmental Writer Michael Casey contributed to this report from Bangkok, Thailand.

Food crisis bites in Vietnam despite economic boom

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
The Manila Times (The Philippines)

HANOI: On the outskirts of Vietnam’s capital, where modern industrial parks eat into centuries-old rice paddies, farmer’s daughter Le Thi Luyen is struggling to carve out a living with a factory job.

Like thousands of laborers here, the 22-year-old walks every day from her dormitory town along a sun-baked dirt track to the nearby manufacturing zone, where she earns about 60 dollars a month at a motorcycle parts plant.

Life was never very easy, Luyen says, squatting in the three-by-four meter (13-by-10 foot) room she shares with three other workers and her daughter in Kim Chung commune just north of Hanoi.

But things have got a whole lot harder in recent months, she says, as the surge in global food prices swept through Vietnam, driving inflation to 21 percent in April compared to a year earlier.

“Food prices have increased sharply, and the money we earn just isn’t enough anymore,” Luyen says. “Two months ago we paid about 8,000 dong ($.50) for a kilogramme of rice. Now it’s about 16,000 dong.”

Food prices, which take the largest chunk out of the paypackets of most Vietnamese, surged by 38 percent year-on-year in April.

“In the past, I could save a few hundred thousand dong a month, but now I can spare nothing,” says Luyen. “I have to spend all my money on everyday goods. The money isn’t enough, but we don’t have many options.”

Like many of the workers who have driven Vietnam’s economic boom—with annual growth rates topping seven percent for the past decade—Luyen came from the countryside to the city in search of a better life.

“My family are farmers,” said Luyen, from nearby Ha Tay province.

“We have grown rice for many years, but recently bad weather has harmed our crops and we have had to pay more for fertilizers and pesticides.

“Soon an industrial park will be built on our land, so we have to try to find other ways to make a living.”

Luyen’s story echoes those of millions across Vietnam and much of Southeast Asia and helps explain some of the causes and consequences of the current global grain price crisis, say experts.

Hanoi, like many Asian cities, emerged in a river delta, where about 1,000 years ago people began to harness the Red River with dykes and irrigation channels to grow rice.

“Today, as Asian cities expand, the rice area contracts,” said Jonathan Pincus, chief economist of the UN Development Programme in Vietnam. “Asia is now going through an historic period of economic growth, of industrialization.

“There is land coming out of production in Asia. Some of that land is going into residential, some of that land is going into industrial. It’s not marginal land, it’s some of the most irrigated rice land in Asia.

“That’s a factor in Vietnam, China, Indonesia and Thailand.”

High food prices “a struggle, particularly for poor people”

Vietnam’s Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat warned in March that more than 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of farmland had been converted into urban areas or factory zones between 2001-2007.

“In five years, the loss is expected to equal current rice exports,” state media quoted him as saying. “It means that we will no longer have extra rice for export and, in the long term, the country’s food security will be threatened.”

It’s not just the loss of rice land that has driven up prices, said Pincus. The other main “economic inputs”—fuel, labour and fertilizer, which is closely linked to energy prices—have also grown more expensive, he said.

The result has been an 80 percent surge in global rice prices so far this year, a trend accelerated by commodity traders who have hoarded stocks to further drive up prices.

Vietnam may be the world’s second-largest rice exporter, but this hasn’t stopped prices surging on local markets, sparking a recent bout of panic-buying as families feared running out.

Galloping inflation, driven in large part by food and fuel prices, has become the communist government’s number one problem, leading to export curbs and warnings of stiff punishments for rice speculators.

The soaring cost of living—fuelled further by livestock diseases such as bird flu and blue-ear pig fever—has already triggered labour unrest, with dozens of strikes hitting plants early this year.

In the year’s first 20 days, more than 25,000 workers walked off the job in nearly 40 strikes, the Saigon Times reported. One thousand workers walked out at Chung Shing Textile Limited in southern Long An province on May 2, demanding better wages and meals.

“One of my friends, who works in a plastics plant, went on stike recently, because wages were too low and they had to work extra hours,” said Luyen’s dormitory neighbour, 26-year-old Nguyen Thi Hue.

“They raised wages a little, but they still don’t match the high prices.”

The UNDP’s Pincus said that while food riots are unlikely in Vietnam, a food-surplus country, more labour unrest is almost certain.

“It is a struggle, particularly for poor people, to pay these higher prices for food,” he said.

“Labour unrest has certainly picked up and wage demands are coming in higher, and companies that don’t want to meet those wage demands will find that workers will down tools and walk out.”