By now we've all heard about it, and certainly felt it as our rupees buy a whole lot less food at the market these days.

Growing energy expenses, competition between bio-fuel and food demands, increases in the frequency and severity of natural disasters, variations in global weather, and changing consumption patterns in China and India are some of the reasons for the rising price of food.

Coupled with other political, climatic and geographical complications, this makes Nepal's population particularly vulnerable. Drought and other natural disasters in 2006 resulted in a national 13 percent cereal production deficit.

The following year Nepal was hit again with drought and massive monsoon flooding. Ironically, hidden amidst the devastation was a silver lining: Nepal's summer 2007 paddy harvest bounced back with an estimated 17 percent increase over last year's production.

We collectively all breathed a sigh of relief. The calamitous flooding brought water to the Tarai, resulting in a bumper crop. Some suggested food production finally might be returning to normal levels.

Unfortunately, that optimism was short lived. Market prices for key commodities have risen sharply over the last few months. WFP estimates that the number of Nepalis struggling with food security has doubled to nearly 8 million people. General instability, civil conflict and the increasing number of bandas are significant obstacles to food access for many families.

Another worrying trend is that households are already adopting severe coping strategies that they would normally undertake only during lean seasons in a low crop production year: migrating earlier, selling assets, cutting the number of meals, using savings or seeking credit to purchase food, selling land and even taking their children out of school.

Over the last few decades, Nepal has become a food deficit country. Yields per hectare have not kept pace with population growth. In fact, Nepal has the lowest yield per hectare for rice and wheat in South Asia. Even during a good or normal harvest year, millions of families struggle to meet basic food needs. Nepal relies on imports from neighboring countries and aid to meet the food gap. Vulnerable, food insecure populations rely upon complex migration patterns to travel to places where economic activities and food are accessible. ('Not just supply and demand,' p9)

There is now a new complication. Because of increased domestic demands combined with poor harvests, India has temporarily banned the export of non-basmati rice and wheat. Nepal, which depends on India to balance its production deficit, is in a lurch.

According to the latest FAO/WFP food security assessment, more than 10 million people in Nepal are undernourished. Many of these vulnerable populations can't produce enough food to meet their needs, are too poor to buy additional food and/or do not have access to food because they live in remote communities.

The impact of the lack of food is most obvious in Nepal's children. The latest National Demographic Health Survey finds that 39 percent of children under five are underweight. Stunting rates for children under five in Nepal are 49 percent.Wasting, a measure of acute malnutrition, has increased in the past five years to 13 percent and in some areas in the Tarai, it is as high as 20 percent, which is an emergency situation according to WHO standards.

The Government of Nepal has committed itself to make both agriculture and food security a priority in their new Three Year Interim Plan. Yet, the challenge of achieving food security is great and it doesn't happen overnight. Much of Nepal's crop land remains rain-fed and prone to natural disasters which can severely impact crop production, food availability and access, particularly for the most vulnerable populations.

How will families already living on the edge of poverty cope with the current trend in rising prices and decreasing supplies? The government, WFP and the donors must step-up our efforts to implement quick-impact programs that result in long-term solutions to break the cycle of hunger and poverty in Nepal.

Last year WFP fed nearly two million people in the country. We've been working here for over 41 years, and the happiest day for WFP will be when Nepal doesn't need us anymore.

Richard Ragan is the Representative for the United Nations World Food
Program (WFP) in Nepal.