“Archaic agriculture practices and erratic rainfall in the recent planting period is expected to lead to an increase in food insecurity for most of Swaziland’s 1.1 million people in 2012, says a government agriculture official,” IRIN reports. “In the 1970s Swaziland was a net exporter of food, but since the early 1990s the country has been dependent on donor assistance to greater or lesser degrees. In 2010 about one in 10 Swazis depended on food aid,” according to the news service.

“‘Generally crop production prospects for the 2011-12 season have been severely compromised and the overall picture is just a bad one. The country will slide back into the need for food assistance for a majority of the population,’ Thembumenzi Dube, an Agriculture Ministry economist, told IRIN,” the news service notes (12/15).