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HIV/AIDS and the agricultural sector: implications for policy in Eastern and Southern Africa





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    Addressing the impact of HIV/AIDS on ministries of agriculture: focus on eastern and southern Africa 2003
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    This paper examines the relevance of HIV/AIDS for Ministries of Agriculture (MoAs) and their work in sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly in Eastern and Southern Africa. The focus of analysis is smallholder agriculture as this has been affected most severely by the HIV epidemic. The systemic impact of HIV/AIDS and the magnitude of its scale are changing the environment in which MoAs operate, triggering or intensifying a number of structural changes in the smallholder sector in particular, in cluding: long-term changes in farming systems (as household cultivation shifts from cash crops to subsistence crops and from labour-intensive to labour-extensive crops); and changes in the age structure and quality of the agricultural labour force as more elderly people and children assume a greater role in farming. Four areas of HIV/AIDS impact are analysed in detail: (1) MoA staff vulnerability to HIV infection and AIDS impact; (2) the disruption of MoA operations and the erosion of capacity to respond to the challenges being posed by the HIV epidemic; (3) the increased vulnerability of MoA clients to food and livelihood insecurity; (4) the relevance of certain MoA policies, strategies and programmes in view of the conditions being created by HIV/AIDS.
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    Interactions between the agricultural sector and the HIV/AIDS pandemic: Implications for agricultural policy 2004
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    This paper considers how the design of agricultural policies and programmes might be modified to better achieve policy objectives in the context of severe HIV epidemics and underscores the central role of agricultural policy in mitigating the spread and impacts of the epidemic. Based on projections of future demographic change in the hardest-hit countries of eastern and southern Africa, HIV/AIDS is likely to have the following effects on the agricultural sector: (1) increased rural inequality caused by disproportionately severe effects of AIDS on relatively poor households; (2) a reduction in household assets and wealth, leading to less capital-intensive cropping systems for severely affected communities and households; and (3) problems in transferring knowledge of crop husbandry and marketing to the succeeding generation of African farmers. It is argued that -- even though the absolute number of working age adults in the hardest-hit countries is projected to remain roughly the same over the next two decades -- the cost of labour in agriculture may rise in some areas as increasing scarcity of capital (notably, animal draft power for land preparation and weeding) will increase the demand for labour in agricultural production or shift agricultural systems to less labour- and capital-intensive crops.
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