DMA Presents Shocking Statistics in Food Security

The Disaster Management Authority (DMA) 2025 Vulnerability Assessment and Analysis (VAA) report, conducted to inform evidence-based policy and programming decisions aimed at improving food and nutrition security in Lesotho, has presented some shocking revelations. 
This report is an order from the Lesotho Vulnerability Assessment Committee (LVAC); a government-led multi-disciplinary committee in the office of the Prime Minister- DMA that was established in 2002 and has been mandated to carry out livelihood vulnerability analysis to provide timely analysis for emergency interventions as well as medium to long-term programming. 
Before this report, the IPC Acute Food Insecurity Analysis released a few weeks ago had projected that 258,300 people, compared to 293,000 (2024), in rural areas would be in crisis or worse from May to September 2025, increasing to 334,100 people from October 2025 to March 2026.
In urban areas, the Economic Capacity of Households to Meet Essential Needs (ECMEN) revealed that 190,850 people compared to 296,049 people would be food insecure in the 2025/26 consumption year, contributing to a total food-insecure population of 524,950 for the 2025/26 consumption year which is a decrease of 25% from last year (2024/25).
Therefore, notable findings from the DMA assessment report include: 
-A national crop production that has indicated an increase in all main cereal crops production,
-maize production estimated at 45,780 mt in the year 2025 as compared to 56,472 mt total production in 2024, indicating a 19 percent decline in maize production,
-a decline in sorghum production by 43 percent, with the current production estimated at 3,616mt compared to 6,300mt in 2024 and
-wheat production that showed a 17 per cent increase as compared to the 2023/24 season; the current year production is estimated at 4,874 mt compared to 4,183 mt in 2024. 
The authority, therefore, recommends immediate humanitarian assistance for the food-insecure population. It also believes that it will be highly beneficial if the government also continues to design interventions intended to promote market opportunities for local farmers who have surplus from their own produce. 
It calls on key stakeholders from governments, agencies and the private sector to collaborate in an effort to design and implement programmes that will improve food production and nutritional status in Lesotho. 
It also recommends improvement of rangelands, protection of water sources and the conduct of comprehensive vaccination campaigns to prevent livestock diseases, calling on the government to act on scaling up anticipatory actions, early warning systems, impact-based forecasts and investment in risk financing to mitigate and timely respond to impacts of hazards and disasters. 
Putting into action the National Strategic Resilience framework to diversify livelihoods and build resilience against future shocks is also highly important. 
These measures, the authority says, aim to improve food and nutrition security and to reduce vulnerability in Lesotho.