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Food agencies warn of shortages in Zimbabwe
ZimOnline
July 20, 2006

http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=12500

HARARE - Most families in Zimbabwe's rural areas will require food assistance after poor harvests again this year, aid agencies said in a report, dispelling claims by President Robert Mugabe's government of a bumper harvest this year.

The report by the Consortium for Southern Africa Food Security Emergency (C-SAFE) that was released last week but made available to ZimOnline this week was compiled from data collated in April when most households would have finished harvesting.

The consortium brings together non-governmental organisations (NGO) involved in relief work and among its members are World Vision, CARE, Catholic Relief Services and the Adventist Development and Relief Agency.

Describing the food situation in Zimbabwe's countryside as "grave", the NGO consortium said because of extremely high unemployment levels in rural areas many households there were resorting to brewing illicit beer which they sell to raise money to buy food.

The report reads in part: "Most of the households reported cereal stocks below 51 kg. Households usually require an average of 78.7 kg of cereals per month. The worst districts are Kadoma, Murehwa, Matobo and Chirumhanzu where all the respondents reported stocks below 51kg.

This comes soon after harvests and shows that harvests for households were poor. This coupled with cereal shortages gives a grave picture of the food security situation in the surveyed districts."

The survey to establish the food situation in rural areas was carried out in a selected eight districts across the country. It is the first independent survey on Zimbabwe's harvests this year after the government blocked similar attempts by NGOs to establish the food situation in the country.

Agricultural Minister Joseph Made was not immediately available for comment on the matter on Wednesday.

Both Made and Mugabe have however insisted in recent months that Zimbabwe would not need food aid this year because it would harvest about 1.8 million tonnes of the staple maize this year, which is enough for national annual consumption.

Mugabe, who is eager to show that his controversial land reforms blamed for food shortages are succeeding after all, has made similar claims of food sufficiency but which later turned out to be false.

Independent food experts and international relief agencies have insisted that shortages of seeds and fertilizer at the beginning of the last farming season meant Zimbabwe would still fail to produce enough food despite receiving good rains.

Zimbabwe, which was once a regional breadbasket, has faced acute food shortages since Mugabe began seizing productive farms from whites for redistribution to landless blacks six years ago. But the black villagers resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the government did not give them inputs support or skills training.

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