Successful pupils get to take their food home

There is a massive food crisis in Swaziland, where it is estimated 35% of the population is infected with HIV/Aids.

The virus has left many children without one or both parents, and large parts of the land uncultivated - in turn leading to widespread hunger.

"We're seeing problems all over the country," Alan Brody, from the UN children's charity Unicef, told BBC World Service's One Planet programme.

But in one school at Ndzevani, in the Lubumba region in the southeast of Swaziland, Unicef has begun teaching the children to garden and grow food themselves - by making gardening part of the curriculum.

"Each child is actually graded on their plot," Mr Brody stated.

"They get a mark - a cabbage exam, if you like - and they also get a reward for good performance, they take that food home."

Pride

It is hoped that the scheme will help some children develop into the skilled farmers the country so desperately needs.

"Our ideal would be that as this develops and children show responsibility, to provide seedlings that they can plant at home," Mr Brody added.

"I think this will create a kind of pride and try to re-establish the dignity of labour and work on agriculture."

Ndzevani is one of the areas of Swaziland that is periodically hit by drought, with last year's hitting particularly hard. Worst struck was the maize crop, the staple food in the country.

Ndzevani is in the south-east of Swaziland

"In other areas you can get a good harvest, but they don't have the capacity to get the crops into the ground anymore," Mr Brody said.

That lack of capacity, it is argued, comes from the fact that so many have succumbed to the Aids pandemic in the region.

It is estimated 29 million people are living with HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa - and by 2020 most of them will have died.

Already 13.5 million Africans have been claimed by the epidemic.

"What you get is a parent takes ill, it affects the labour capacity in the family," Mr Brody said.

"The illness takes up resources and they start selling things.

"They sell the cattle, the livestock - eventually they may even sell the tools.

"So you reach a point where you're losing parents and those who are left - whether it's a wife who's left or orphans who are left - don't have the capacity to grow anything."

Culture of denial

It has taken a long time for the link between the Aids pandemic and food shortages to be recognised - and there is still much debate as to how extensive it is.

This is partly due to a culture of denial, as farm workers suffering from the virus are instead said to be infected with other diseases.

It's such obvious common sense that if people die in huge numbers, the production of food - which they were previously engaged in - will be reduced UN Aids in Africa envoy Stephen Lewis

Further, some workers abandon their own farms in order to help sick relatives out who are seeking to hide their illness from their supervisors.

Consequently, although production may be maintained on large-scale agriculture projects, it falls on smaller family farms.

This, scientist Sydney Rosen told One Planet, has left the question "wide open for speculation on both sides".

"Some on one side are claiming that [Aids] is devastating African agriculture and is the cause of a great deal of the famine that we're starting to see in southern Africa and in the Horn of Africa," Ms Rosen said.

"There are other people who say, well, measurable output isn't declining that much so there's nothing to do here."

Common sense

However others see the link as very clear cut.

Teachers at the Ndzevani school grade the "cabbage exams"

"It's true - the link has not been made as closely as it should," UN secretary general Kofi Annan's special envoy on Aids in Africa, Stephen Lewis, told One Planet.

"But the truth is you've got several countries now with a million or more children who are orphans, and they wander the landscape of Africa, feeling sometimes angry, bewildered, anti-social; they're struggling for food, for places to stay."

And Mr Lewis added that it was simple logic to work out that the pandemic would lead to fewer farmers, and therefore fewer crops.

"It just seems to me that it's such obvious common sense that if people die in huge numbers, the production of food - which they were previously engaged in - will be reduced," he said.

"If the production of food is reduced and the pandemic of Aids is to ravage the population, then the combination of the two is a witch's brew of horror."