Little hope of North Korea improving food production
Updated
North Korea's leader has called for a decisive turning-point this year to end the country's long-running food shortage.
Marking the start of the rice-planting season, Kim Jong-ll demanded an all-out campaign to improve cereal production and to take key steps towards solving the food problem.
Presenter: Sonja Heydeman
Speakers: Lena Savelli, World Food Programme spokeswoman in North Korea; Prof John McKay from Analysis International in Melbourne
HEYDEMAN: North Korea continues to battle its decades long shortage of food. The World Food Programme is working to provide food aide to more than six million North Koreans but says sadly it isn't able to come close. Programme spokesperson in North Korea, Lena Savelli, says the situation is dire.
SAVELLI: Our latest assessment on the crop production of last year showed the country was suffering a large food deficit to feed its population. Right now the country is coming into the agricultural lean season which means that the crops of rice and maze from last year are rapidly running out and in the World Food Programme monitoring we are already seeing signs of stress in the population.
HEYDEMAN: South Korea's unification ministry said in February that the North's food production would fall more than one million tons short of demand this year. However, the World Food Program's Lena Savelli says that figure underestimates the gravity of the situation.
SAVELLI: The latest assessment on crop production done by The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Programme puts the deficit even higher .. as high as 1.8 million metric tons of food for the agriculture year 2009. We are planning to feed as many as 6.2 million people in the DPRK in 2009. Unfortunately we have not been able to raise enough resources to reach all the affected people.
HEYDEMAN: While agriculture in North Korea needs to be addressed, Professor John McKay from Analysis International in Melbourne says there's a broader systemic problem that needs to be considered.
He says the agricultural sector has been dragged down by the crisis in other sectors, particularly the industrial sector.
McKAY: When the Soviet Union collapsed North Korea lost its major ally .. the ally that provided oil and technology and all kinds of things including cheap access to certain kinds of food but more particularly to access a cheap level a whole range of industrial products and those industrial products had ramifications for the agricultural sector. For example, fertiliser much of which is a by-product of petroleum is no longer available in North Korea. There is no fuel oil to drive the tractors and other kinds of machinery and that has had a major impact on North Korean productivity.
HEYDEMAN: North Korea has relied heavily on overseas aid to feed millions of its people. However North Korea in March refused to accept further food aid from the United States. South Korea, last year didn't make its customary shipment of hundreds of thousands of tons of rice and fertiliser because the North failed to request the deliveries.
Cross-border ties have worsened since a conservative government took office in Seoul last year and vowed to link major economic aid to the North's progress in nuclear disarmament.
Professor John McKay says the human toll needs to be considered, as the ongoing food crisis has had an enormous impact on people's lives.
McKAY: Estimates vary as to how many people have died. At least a million died from malnutrition in the 1990s and maybe some people say two to three million. There is now a whole generation of children now growing into teenagers in North Korea who are very very undersized for their age. They are much smaller and some of them are so badly nourished that there are serious doubts about mental development and intellectual development of this whole generation. We are faced with a very serious problem. The world community I think is going to have to try and step in and I think the sort of actions that the South Koreans are taking at the moment is not going to help because the North Koreans have made it quite clear that they are not going to bow to this kind of pressure, They have never bowed to it before and the sufferers are going to be the population of North Korea as a whole.
Professor McKay says with food in short supply, the fear now is that disease could more readily take hold.
McKAY: The immune systems obviously are very seriously affected by malnutrition and something like a swine flu or one of the other viruses that have been around could devastate the North Korean population and this is something that we were worried about when the SARS epidemic was at its height. It didn't really affect North Korea but I think it's only a matter of time before something like that happens and the implications are very dire indeed.
