Richard Trunchard was in Western Afghanistan this week talking with farmers and herders.

And what he heard, it's bad. I spoke to farmers who'd lost 80-90% of their crop.

The livestock owner is similarly about being forced to sell their animals or they're seeing

their animals die because of a lack of pasture, a lack of food. Trunchard is the country director

of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Afghanistan. He said he met whole families

forced from their land by a brutal drought. They were sleeping on the street in the city of

Harat in freezing temperatures. This was young children. It was older children. It was mothers,

grandmothers, fathers. It's really tough. No one wants to choose that. You do that when you have

absolutely no other choice but to leave. The UN says that more than 23 million people in

Afghanistan will face acute food insecurity in the coming months. That's more than half the

population. Your whole day is consumed thinking about where to get the next meal from your

skipping meals. Perhaps your children are eating but you're not and you are selling everything

you've got. And the consequences of this crisis are showing up in Afghan hospitals.

Jane Ferguson, a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour, saw that first hand on a recent reporting

trip. The child malnutrition wards have been filling up with premature babies, newborn babies,

and toddlers who are struggling severely with what the aid agency is called SAM.

Severe acute malnutrition. It makes them sick. It makes them vulnerable to infection. It makes them

difficult to feed, difficult to keep food down. It basically spirals into a health crisis for a

whole tiny, tiny generation. Consider this. In Afghanistan, drought, political upheaval,

and economic collapse have created a perfect storm for humanitarian crisis.

For MenPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Wednesday, November 17.

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