Harare | Sunday
ZIMBABWE, currently battling a famine which some farmers say is the worst for 50 years, could face another drought in the next season starting year end, an international food security agency has warned.
”While Zimbabwe is coming to terms with the current 2001/02 dry spell, there are fears that the 2002/03 season could be yet another drought,” said the US-based Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet) in its latest update on the food situation in Zimbabwe.
Fewsnet said warm sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, normally associated with poor rainfall in southern Africa, were beginning to develop.
Zimbabwe’s rainy season is due to start in November, running through to the end of March.
The country currently faces a critical food shortage as official grain reserves have been exhausted. It has resorted to importing grain despite acute foreign exchange shortages. Appeals for international emergency aid launched late last year were met with a disappointing response.
The government has already declared the food shortage a national disaster, to allow local and international humanitarian aid to be sourced.
”As the 2001/02 marketing season… draws to an end, Zimbabwe is experiencing one of its worst food security conditions in 50 years,” said Fewsnet.
”Conditions are not expected to improve in the coming months,” it added.
”The country has experienced a below-average harvest in 2002, foreign currency inflows are not likely to improve,” said the agency.
Fewsnet recommends that government import some 1,5-million tons of grain for consumption during the 2002/03 marketing season, but a regional food security body, the Southern African Development Community Regional Early Warning Unit (SADC-REWU), argues that two million tonnes will be needed.
The authorities plan to import grain, to cover next year’s expected shortfall, from Kenya, Argentina and Brazil, according to Fewsnet, which remains pessimistic ”given the problems of foreign currency,” predicting that ”the government will find it difficult to meet large imports”.
Although this year international and local aid agencies are feeding around 558 000 hungry villagers, Fewsnet said the number of people requiring food handouts from June 2002 could swell to 2,5-million.
Last month, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), warned that the number of people relying on outside food aid in Zimbabwe was set to rise from the half a million it was looking after.
WFP has blamed Zimbabwe’s food woes on ”the impact of the land reform and economic hardship, combined with failed rains in key production areas”.
This seasons’s maize harvest is ”at best 40% of last year’s poor crop” which was about 1,48 million tons, according to SADC-REWU.
Zimbabwe’s 12 million people consume an average 1,8-million tons of the staple maize grain per year. – AFP