Zim provinces face hunger
by Tobias Manyuchi Wednesday 04 May 2011
HARARE – Four of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces face food shortages this year with
poor households in the affected areas expected to harvest food enough to
last only about two months, according to the Famine Early Warning System and
Network (FEWSNET).
The US-funded early warning system on Tuesday said a prolonged dry spell
from February to March destroyed crops in Masvingo, Manicaland, Matabeleland
South and Midlands provinces, adding food shortages in the hunger-prone
provinces was expected to set in earlier than normal.
“The lean season is likely to set in earlier than usual in these areas in
the 2011/12 consumption year as the dry spell significantly reduced the
potential contribution of own household production to household consumption
and income,” the FEWSNET said in a report.
“The poor households in the affected areas are currently dependent upon food
aid, most of which stopped in March leaving these households to depend on
their meager harvests that are likely to last for up to two months,” it
said.
However the report said staple cereals and other basic food stuffs continue
to be generally available in other parts of the country outside the four
drought-hit provinces, adding that food availability in such areas would
receive a boost from this season’s crop currently being harvested.
But the report also said that despite general stable food supplies and a
relatively stable macroeconomic environment, poverty levels remain
relatively high in Zimbabwe, with low incomes amid high levels of both
unemployment and underemployment that continue to constrain the ability of
poor households to access adequate food.
The southern African country, which was once a breadbasket of the region,
has since 2001 experienced acute food shortages chiefly blamed on President
Robert Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent drive to seize land from
experienced white farmers for redistribution to blacks.
The farm seizures saw farm production tumbling by more than 60 percent after
Mugabe failed to provide funding, inputs and skills training to black
villagers resettled on former white farms to maintain production.
But agriculture has shown signs of recovery with maize production rising to
1.5 million tonnes in the 2009/10 season up from about 1.2 million tones in
the 2008/09 season.
However the FEWSNET estimates maize production this year to remain stagnant
at 1.5 million tonnes, which is 500 000 tonnes short of the about two
million tonnes Zimbabwe requires for consumption per year. — ZimOnline