"Guatemala is in crisis. Even here we have no fresh meat, no potatoes, no vegetables," said a waiter in a popular backpackers' eatery in Guatemala's second city Quetzaltenango.

Vegetable plantations and chicken farms were destroyed by floods and the land looks from the air like a patchwork quilt of cocoa-colored lakes. Farmers were hampered by a lack of heavy machinery to help them clear roads.

The official toll from flooding and mudslides after Hurricane Stan last week is over 650 dead and some 400 missing but emergency workers put the real number at around 2,000.

While aid agencies worked with the army and government to stem the crisis, many fear the worst is still to come for tens of thousands of surviving Maya Indian peasants in the fir-covered mountains, now streaked with dozens of mudslides.

"At the moment we are just dealing with the emergency but the worst will come afterward: epidemics, destroyed harvests, peasants who can't return to their land. And we can't do anything about that," said air force pilot Hans Yaeggy at a military base in Quetzaltenango, where he was flying food and bottled water out to victims.

The pilots here have seen a wide picture of the damage, flying over remote hilltop villages where flattened crops spell destitution for Mayans living off maize and a few cash crops.

"We can cover people's needs for now but the government doesn't have the economic resources or structure to get out of this crisis in the long term. Not without help," Yaeggy said.

COFFEE HIT

The country lost between 2.4 percent and 6 percent of its coffee crop due to lashing winds, mudslides and flooding from Hurricane Stan, the head of growers' group Anacafe said.

Guatemala's geography, with millions living off subsistence farming in mountain hamlets makes it prone to mudslides and recovery efforts are difficult.

Many isolated villages hit last week went for days without help as a blanket of thick cloud prevented helicopters getting in. Food-laden trucks from the capital took days to navigate slippery hairpin bends on dirt roads through the mountains after the main highway was cut off.

"Things are better now but at first there was a terrible lack of organization and communication," said Canadian Ken Herfst, who lives in Guatemala and has been using volunteers from his Free Reformed church to help the relief effort.

"We went to help flooded villages and the water was up to our necks. But the problem was we were in the mountains so nobody had any boats. We couldn't find one anywhere," he said.

After the disorganized start to the relief effort, many are skeptical about a pledge by President Oscar Berger to find new land for mudslide victims.

In Cua, a tiny hamlet on the edge of the western border town of Tacana where 80 people died when a wall of mud buried two churches and a school, the survivors are in shock and terrified they will starve once the food aid stops.

Smashed marrows and carrots poked through the mass of mud that was declared a mass grave with 32 people buried beneath it. Mud also covered Cua's main maize plantation.

"We've lost everything. We can't plant more maize until May, so all year we have nothing to eat," said Maria Hernandez, twisting her fingers as she sat in a shabby shelter in Tacana.

Aid workers are concerned about disease and pollution of water supplies in places like Cua or Panabaj, where up to 1,400 died in mudslides.