Posted on 10/01/2005 4:03:00 PM PDT by Clive
ROME -- The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says Zimbabwe could run out of food in the next few months unless a massive emergency relief programme is put in place and warns that food security was unlikely to improve next year even if the country received good rains in the 2005/06 season.
In a report on the food supply situation and crop prospects for sub-Saharan Africa released this week, the UN body said the lean period -- when most countries run out of grains and have to wait for the next harvest -- was expected to set in earlier than usual for seven southern African countries, including Zimbabwe.
The lean period normally starts in December and ends around March of the following year.
Other countries facing a similar situation are Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Swaziland and Zambia. But unlike her neighbours, Zimbabwe would require more than an above normal agricultural season to shake off the effects of the past two dry seasons, according to FAO.
"In Zimbabwe high inflation, coupled with shortages of maize grain and fuel as well as transport problems are causing serious food insecurity. For the same reasons, prospects for 2006 are dire, regardless of rainfall," said FAO.
Zimbabwe and Malawi account for more than two-thirds of the 12 million people in southern Africa threatened with starvation this year.
According to FAO more than three million Zimbabweans or a quarter of the country's 12 million people would require food aid between now and the next harvest around April/May 2006. About 4.6 million people would need humanitarian aid in Malawi.
Rising food prices are seen worsening the plight of those in need of assistance.
Zimbabwe produced about 600 000 tonnes of the staple maize crop during the 2004/05 season, down from a peak of more than two million in 1999/2000. The country requires more than 1.8 million tonnes of maize for domestic consumption every year.
Critics say while poor weather played a part, the drastic decline in food output in Zimbabwe is largely a result of President Robert Mugabe's controversial land redistribution programme under which he seized productive land from whites and gave it over to landless black peasant farmers.
But the veteran Zimbabwean leader failed to give the new black landowners skills training or financial and farm inputs support to maintain production on the former white-owned farms.
The FAO report also revealed that the Zimbabwe government had by August this year only imported about a third of the 1.2 million tonnes that needed to be procured to feed its people.
"By August 2005 about 334 000 tonnes of grain had been received/contracted, primarily from South Africa. Very little, only about 1 000 tonnes, have been recorded through informal cross-border channels," FAO said.
The low grain imports have been blamed on falling foreign exchange reserves. - ZimOnline
For months we have been told that food shortages are because of crippling drought in Zimbabwe and yet I was very surprised to see from the road how many rivers still had running water in them and how many dams were not dry. This is not the picture of drought that we Africans know so well. This unharvested water is shocking in a hungry country. It should be used to bring production to the miles and miles of deserted, untended farms that you see along the roads. The farms that the government changed the constitution to grab. Less than a month away from the main maize planting season, I was very shocked to see almost no prepared lands, no ploughed fields and no tractors tilling the farms for 250 kilometres along the main road to the border. It is chillingly quiet out there on the farms and yet summer is here and the rains are about to begin.
-
I'll bet Mugabe and his swinish colleagues have plenty to eat.
Mugabe must mean drought in Swahili.
Gee, who would have thought that murdering or scaring off your most knowledgeable, efficient, productive farmers and creating a culture of corruption, paranoia and militarism would be bad for food production?
Honestly, raise your hands if you didn't see this coming. Come on, folks, make yourselves known.
*waits*
As I thought.
Why work when feeding on welfare from other nations is a freebie.
This is so sad. Bad leadership is a disaster for any nation.
They reap what they sow.
not my problem.
Send them luggage.
And there is no way a relief effort from the outside could deliver sufficient food, without harassment from the xenophobic regime now in control in that country, and the outright theft and diversion of the supplies at they arrived, even if they managed to get to the frontier.
This would be like sending food relief to Nazi Germany for the Jewish people in that contry on November 9, 1938, a date famed for being "Kristallnacht".
Translation: send more money.
Another UN "large cash kickbacks-for-food" program!
My thoughts exactly.
Mugabe has absolutely run Zimbabwe into the ground.
Every starvation-related death is his complete responsibility.
And yet the UN and OAU stands by, twiddles their thumbs and does nothing.
Hi....good tag line!
for how long is the west responsible to feed cloth and heal africa?
Get to work, Kofi...and quit "issuing warnings"...it's YOUR job. Just do it.
I'm getting tired of corrupt governments feeding off their people, then letting their people starve to death.
Add North Korea to that list also.
Tell the starving of Rhodesia that Mugabe and his cronies have plenty of food, and if they are hungry enough, they should go and get it.
Link to your post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1494981/posts
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.