DAKAR, 3 June 2011 (IRIN) - Liberian host families and the Ivoirian refugees staying with them are resorting to eating rice seeds intended for this year's crop as food stocks dwindle in eastern Liberia, according to aid agencies.

Some 182,000 refugees who fled the violence in Côte d'Ivoire, are registered in Liberia, 90 percent of them staying with host families, rather than in refugee camps, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Liberians and Ivoirians are also having to resort to buying imported rice - a coping mechanism usually exhibited far later in the lean season, according to a recent Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) assessment.

Rice prices are 20-25 percent higher than in April 2010, according to the US Agency for International Development's FEWSNET, further straining budgets in this chronically food-insecure region.

In the first few months of the refugee influx, food distributions were "patchy or nonexistent", Susan Sandars, Oxfam's communications and advocacy officer in Liberia, told IRIN; and now, "considerable gaps in the response remain," she said.

Supply chain problems early on led to cereal shortages, meaning the World Food Programme (WFP) had to lower ration size per family, its emergency coordinator, Jerry Bailey, told IRIN.

Aid agencies underestimated by about one third, the number of refugees who would arrive, said Oxfam's food security and livelihoods adviser, Nanthilde Kamara; and have not come up with effective ways to deliver to refugees who are so spread out - sheltering across an estimated 90 villages.

Challenges

Poor roads, broken bridges, and few available trucks on the commercial market continue to pose problems, said WFP's Bailey, but response has improved. WFP has bought 10 additional trucks that can navigate difficult terrain, and is making emergency repairs to strategic roads. The organization is also setting up mobile storage units to try to ease distributions.

WFP will distribute two-week food rations to 15,000 refugees for the next two months, and will deliver general food rations to a wider group of refugees and hosts in Nimba and Grand Geddeh counties. Cereal stocks are up - to 2,000 tons - though some say this will not last beyond one month or so. Thus far the agency has not delivered to Maryland County.

The government, alongside a number of agencies, including FAO and Oxfam, is distributing seeds and tools to thousands of host families so they can boost their harvest in three months time; Oxfam is also figuring out how best to distribute cash.

Refugees and hosts will need support for a long time to come, estimate aid agencies, as many Ivoirians are still too scared to return home for fear of attacks due to their ethnicity or perceived political affiliation.  Many thousands could still be in-country in 2012, according to Bailey.

Given this, they need to shift their responses so they are more appropriate to the context - setting up smaller, nimble, mobile teams who can deliver food village to village, said Oxfam's Kamara.

Source: The Integrated Regional Information Networks (http://www.irinnews.org )