A UN crop assessment earlier this year said maize output had fallen by 67 percent compared with 2001.
I was talking to a farmer last week, that gets a world crop production report. The private company report puts this year's crop at 10% of previous levels.
This assumes that the crop will be harvested, which I doubt.
Also note that the farm invasions started in 2000.
The 67% reduction is from a lower than normal base.
My concern is that all the planning and forcasting of famine relief requirements assumes that there will be a crop at the end of the summer which is just starting.
But the intensive preparation activities that ought to be happening on the commercial farms is not happening.
There will be no summer crop next April.
And I doubt that there will be winter crop next September.