UN food agency team jets in
Written by Gift Phiri, Chief Writer
Wednesday, 27 June 2012 10:30
HARARE – A UN food agency team is in Zimbabwe to assess crop supplies in the
southern African country after nearly half of its crops was written off due
to a mid season mini-drought.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (Fao) has dispatched its teams in
the field for a crucial crop and food supply assessment mission.
The eight-member delegation comprises Rome-based permanent representatives
from France, Iran, Morocco, Indonesia, the United States and the European
Union.
The assessment, due to be completed in about a week’s time, will establish
the potential food deficit and help the government and relief agencies
determine how much food aid is required.
Production of the staple maize plunged to 1,35 million tonnes in 2011.
Zimbabwe consumes about 1,8 million tonnes of maize annually.
Government says out of the 1 689 786 hectares of maize planted area, 45
percent was lost to a mid-season drought. The late rains saw crops in
several parts of the country wilting under severe moisture stress.
In a bid to tackle hunger in Zimbabwe, Fao has been giving small-holder
farmers a boost by distributing seeds and fertilisers.
“We want to understand the operations, activities being carried out by the
Fao,” Mohammed Lakhal, Fao’s Moroccan representative said.
The UN team will go around the country to assess the harvests. The
delegation of permanent representatives visited upper Guruve yesterday to
assess a project bankrolled by Fao to resuscitate dip tanks.
According to the latest Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZimVac)
report, about a million people, representing 12 percent of the rural
population will require food assistance.
Rates of chronic and acute child malnutrition still stand at 34 percent and
2,4 percent respectively, while a third of rural Zimbabweans still drink
from unprotected water sources, which continues to expose them to waterborne
diseases.
The United Nations has warned that around a million people, nearly a 10th of
Zimbabwe’s rural population, needed food aid.
Food production in Zimbabwe has fallen by more than 50 percent, measured
against a 10-year average, due mostly to the current social, economic and
political situation and the effects of drought.
The shortfall means Zimbabwe will need to import almost 500 000 tonnes of
food, either commercially or through food aid, to meet the minimum food
needs of its people.
Agriculture Mechanisation and Irrigation Development minister Joseph Made
told the Fao team, Western “sanctions-induced challenges and climate change”
had gutted commercial agriculture.
Made’s claims are at variance with economists who suggest the combined
effects of drought, economic collapse, and the government’s sullied land
reform programme has led to severe food shortages.
President Mugabe denies that his agrarian revolution has killed agriculture,
and says the land seizures were necessary to correct colonial imbalances
that left 70 percent of the country’s best farmland in the hands of the
minority white population.
The southern African country, once a regional bread basket, has failed to
feed itself since 2000 following the land reform.