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Zimbabwe food security update April 2005
Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET)
May 20, 2005

http://www.fews.net/centers/innerSections.aspx?f=zw&m=1001613&pageID=monthliesDoc

Summary and implications
The food security problem facing Zimbabwe is of such a magnitude that Zimbabwe will need to import substantial amounts of cereals during the April 2005 - March 2006 consumption year in order to ensure sufficient food is available for all Zimbabweans. It will be critical for the government, private sector and the humanitarian community to create effective partnerships to ensure adequate in-country distribution of this food. The majority of farming households will harvest nothing and are already dependent on the market for all their food requirements at a time when own crop production would normally be their dominant source of food. Income opportunities in rural Zimbabwe will be more limited this year than they were last year, making it difficult for many to compensate for their crop losses through purchases, even if the food is available on the market.

Seasonal timeline

Summary of food security hazards

• Failed crop production
• Foreign currency shortages
• Basic commodity shortages in both rural and urban markets
• Escalating basic commodity prices
• High staple food prices

Food security summary
A few rural households in parts of the Mashonaland provinces, Manicaland and Midlands provinces will harvest some food crops from their fields. For many, the harvested crops will only last for a few months. The majority of farming households in the southern provinces of the country will harvest nothing from their fields.

Parallel market grain prices normally decline rapidly at this time of the year, in response to improved supply from the harvest. This year, the expected fall in prices has not occurred, and instead, prices continue to increase throughout the country. As illustrated in Figure 1, prices are highest in the central and southern districts where crop conditions are reported to be worst.

The National Availability Problem
As a result of the production failure this year, the bulk of Zimbabwe's 1.8 million MT maize consumption requirement will have to be imported. While some of this food can be safely distributed through the normal marketing mechanism, much of it will need to be distributed through timely food aid programs because of critical household cash income deficits, discussed below. Importing and distributing this food will require substantial foreign currency resources, considerable improvement in the operational efficiency of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) and its capacity to move and distribute grain within the country, and a widening of the range of players in the distribution of food in the country to include greater private sector participation.

However, Zimbabwe's foreign currency situation has been deteriorating steadily since 1999, with a deficit of over 600 million USD reached in 2004. (See Figure 2). Since the beginning of 2005, the foreign currency auction floor has been supplying far less foreign currency than the amount required by participants at the auction. The demand for foreign currency on the auction floor has grown to about US$215 million, yet the amount of foreign currency made available by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for allotment remains at just US$11million. The low average prices for tobacco so far this year and the fall of world cotton prices from about US$0.75 last year to about US$0.58 this year puts further constraints on the foreign currency reserves. At the same time, the need for food imports has to compete with other national priorities such as fuel, electricity, medicines and education, all of which require foreign currency. Given the current shortages, importing adequate food for the nation in the current consumption year is going to be an enormous challenge for Zimbabwe.

Household Access Problems
In the 2003/04 consumption year, Zimbabwe produced about 1 million MT of maize and about 71,000 MT of sorghum. The Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) estimated that own crop production accounted for about 42 percent the total food sources available to an average rural household in Zimbabwe in that year. Given that cereal production will be substantially lower in the 2004/05 cropping season than in 2002/2003, the contribution to average household food income from own crop production can reasonably be expected to be much less. The deficit is expected to be even bigger for poor households and the majority of households in the traditionally grain deficit areas. Consequently, most rural households in Zimbabwe will be dependent on grain supplies emanating from outside their local areas, accessed through the market, remittances, gifts and food assistance programs.

Poor crop production will also limit rural incomes. Cotton and tobacco normally provide important seasonal cash income to smallholder farming households. However, production of these crops in the smallholder sector is expected to be down this year. A combination of poor rainfall conditions and limited credit support to cotton farmers by cotton marketing companies during the 2004/05 cropping season resulted in a smaller area planted to cotton as well as a decline in yields. The Zimbabwe Cotton Producers Association estimates the 2004/05 cotton harvest to be between 140,000 and 150,000 MT, down from last season's harvest of about 333,000 MT. While this will reduce cash income for better off cotton farmers, it also limits the capacity of these households to pay for casual labor supplied by the poor households, thereby reducing poor households' capacity to make up for the food gap they are facing this consumption year.

To make matters worse, in the southern districts of Matebeleland, the mopani worms, which provide an important source of protein as well as cash (from sales) did not come as expected around March and April this year. This puts poor households even further at risk of food shortage this year.

Urban Food Security
Food security in urban areas continues to worsen. Price increases have been recorded for a number of basic commodities on both the formal and informal markets during the month of April 2005. A shortage of basic commodities, such as cooking oil, sugar, milk, wheat flour and cheaper-grade maize meal, re-emerged at the beginning of April 2005. Consumers may be able to get some of these commodities on the parallel markets, but only at exorbitant prices. The price increases have continuously drained the meager disposable income of the poor urban households.

In March 2005, the cost of the monthly basket for a low-income urban household of six, monitored by the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe (CCZ), stood at Z$2,123,121, marking an increase of 9 percent from last month's cost of Z$1,945,080 (Figure 3). Amidst the general increase in prices, major increases were recorded for rent, which went up by 20 percent, and cooking oil and vegetables, which increased by 7 percent. Given recent fuel shortages, transport costs are likely to go up as well.

At the same time, as Figure 3 illustrates, minimum wages have failed to keep pace with these rising costs. Commercial sector minimum wages, pegged at Z$750,000 per month in March, covered only about 35 percent of the CCZ basket cost. Domestic workers, who are also in the low income earning group, had their wages revised upwards by 100 percent to around Z$800,000 per month in April 2005. Although this increase is welcome on the domestic workers' side, many employers may not be in a position to pay these wages, and this might result in a number of domestic workers losing their jobs.

Some households are harvesting some maize from their urban agricultural plots and this may provide temporary relief to those at risk of food insecurity. On a per household basis, production is minimal and not likely to last long. Given the continued struggle that urban households face in obtaining adequate food, the government and its partners should make sure to include this group in its food assistance programmes in the coming consumption year.

Slow progress on winter wheat
Although wheat is not Zimbabwe's main staple cereal crop, it plays an important food security role in Zimbabwe, especially in urban areas, where it supplements or is substituted for the maize-based meals. Zimbabwe consumes about 480,000 MT of wheat each year. About 400,000 MT should be produced in Zimbabwe, and the remaining 80,000 MT is gritting wheat that has to be imported. Wheat yields averaged around 4 MT/ha in the 1970s. In the 1980s average wheat yields increased to about 5.6 MT/ha; but the 1990s saw a drop in yields to an average of about 5 MT/ha. Of those growing wheat in the past five years, an increasing proportion is comprised of new farmers, with a much smaller number of experienced farmers continuing to grow the crop. This, coupled with difficulties of maintaining and operating irrigation and complimentary irrigation equipment, means that it is reasonable to assume a conservative national average wheat yield estimate of 2.5 MT/ha and an optimistic yield estimate of 3 MT/ha for Zimbabwe. It then follows that Zimbabwe should aim to put between 130,000 Ha and 160,000 Ha under winter wheat annually to satisfy national consumption requirements.

Reports from AREX and the farmers' unions in the country suggest that a much lower area of land than required has been prepared this year because of shortages of tillage equipment and fuel as well high tillage costs. Disking went up by 55 percent on last year's price. Plowing now costs about 105 percent more than last year's fee. Farmers are facing immense difficulties in accessing funds set aside by the government to support winter wheat production in 2005, due to cumbersome bureaucratic loan application and processing procedures. In addition, the below-normal 2004/05 rainfall season left most dams with limited water for irrigation.

These factors contribute to rising fears that very few farmers will be able to plant their winter wheat in time. Wheat planted after May risks being spoiled by early summer rains. As a result, it is highly unlikely that area planted to winter wheat this year will exceed the 71,000 Ha planted last year. Figure 4 shows that last year's estimate of area planted to winter wheat was the highest ever since 1995.

Moving towards a common basis for intervention
Although there is a general agreement that Zimbabwe will face a large food deficit during the April 2005-March 2006 consumption year, no such consensus has been reached with regards to the size of the deficit and its geographic spread in the country; nor is there agreement on the numbers of people requiring food or current national food stocks. The multi-stakeholder crop forecasting committee that drew expertise from the private sector, government, SADC Regional Early Warning Unit and the non-governmental fraternity and chaired by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) did not meet this year.

Results of crop assessments that have been conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development's department of Agricultural Research and Extension (AREX) and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development in March and April 2005 may be released to the public soon, but the international community has shown limited confidence in these results in the past. Last year, in the absence of independent crop and food supply assessments, the food security and vulnerability assessment by the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVAC) offered a common base upon which food assistance and other humanitarian interventions were designed and implemented by both the government and the international agencies. The ZimVAC may end up playing the same role this year, given that the government is unlikely to invite the joint FAO-WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment mission to verify the size of the 2004/05 crop production. The ZimVAC plans to start data collection during the second half of May 2005 and to produce preliminary results for its rural food security assessment in July 2005.

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