'Haiti on the brink of famine'

[seemslikeadream]

'Haiti on the brink of famine'
06/05/2004 20:19 - (SA)


Stuttgart - Haiti is on the brink of a famine with farmers reduced to eating reserves of seed they should be planting, a German aid agency warned on Thursday.

"It's feared the food situation in rural regions will get worse still," the Protestant Church-linked agency Diakonische Katastrophenhilfe said, citing its Latin America chief Michael Jordan after a visit to Haiti.

He said farmers were eating seed because they had no other food, but it was putting the main sowing season in danger which would then reduce any harvest.

"We're worried about a famine," he said.

According to the organisation, more than half of Haiti's 8.5 million people were already dependent on food aid even before former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide resigned earlier this year and went into exile following a surge in political violence.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,6119,2-10-1462_1523026,00.html