500 000 Hectares Of Planted Maize Crop A Write Off – Made
Bulawayo, March 08, 2012- Zimbabwe faces serious hunger as 500 000 hectares
of the planted maize crop during the 2011-2012 farming season is a write
off, Agriculture and Mechanization Minister, Joseph Made has revealed.
“According to the final crop assessment by the government, this past farming
season 1 600 000 hectares of the maize crop was planted but because of lack
of rain, 500 000 hectares is a write off. The planted crops suffered
moisture stress because of the pronged dry spell. We face hunger as a result
and urgent measures are needed to avert deaths due to starvation. The rains
really let us down,” Made said in an interview.
This leaves the country with only 1 100 000 million hectares of the planted
maize crop against the national grain requirement stands at two million
tonnes of maize per annum.
Made added that there is a need for the Finance Ministry to avail funds to
sustain the grain loan scheme and for the rollout of food for work
programmes for hunger facing provinces of the country.
China has since donated $14 million worth of food aid to Zimbabwe in an
attempt to ease the eminent food crisis facing country’s populace.
According to statistics from the World Food Program (WFP) indicated that
more than one million Zimbabweans are said to be in need of food aid between
now and March 2012 following the continuous dry spell that has been
affecting the national produce.
The southern African country has struggled to feed itself since 2000, when
President Robert Mugabe began a drive to seize white-owned farms to resettle
landless blacks, leading to a sharp fall in agricultural output.
Production of the staple maize started to recover after President Robert
Mugabe formed a unity government with his rival, Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai, and rose from less than 500,000 tonnes in 2007-8 to 1.45 million
tonnes in the 2010/11 season.