**5.2 Impact on agriculture**

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in several developing countries, particularly when measured by the percentage of people dependent on it for their livelihood. Although the sector may produce only 20% of a country's wealth (measured as a percentage of the gross national product), it might provide a living (survival) for as much as 80% of some developing countries' populations (Agarwal, 2002). Indirectly, it provides a living for other parts of the population, for example, processing workers on sugar estates. The effect of AIDS is debilitating at a family level. As an infected farmer becomes increasingly ill, he and family members who take care of him, spend less and less time working on family crops. The family, therefore, begins to lose income from "un-marketed" or incompletely tended crops, and may even sell off farm implements or household properties as a means to survive (Dhar, 1999).

This cycle is compounded by high costs of health care. Whether the sick person turns to a traditional healer or to health services, he/she will surely spend money. A 1997 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) showed that in the midwest of Cote d' ivories (Ivory Coast), care for male AIDS patients cost, on average, about US\$ 300 a year, which is a quarter to a half of the net annual income for most small scale farms (Kaplan, 2000). The time lost by family members should also be taken into account. For instance, repeated absence of another member of the farm to accompany the patient to a healer, also reduces the farm's production. Also, when the most debilitating phases of AIDS coincide with key farming periods such as clearing or sowing, time spent nursing a sick member, certainly has a negative impact on turnover (Answers.com, 2009).

#### **5.3 HIV and business**

Some companies in Africa have already felt the impact of HIV on their bottom line. A manager at one sugar processing estate in Kenya counted the cost of HIV infection in a number of ways: absenteeism (8000 days of labour cost owing to sickness between 1995 and 1997 alone); lower productivity (50% drop in the ratio of processed sugar recovered from raw care between 1993 and 1997) and higher overtime costs for workers who are obliged to work longer hours to compensate for the void left by sick colleagues (Booth, 2005).
