President Robert Mugabe, on the campaign trail ahead of March 29 elections, acknowledged acute shortfalls in local food production and said Zimbabweans were being sent to neighbouring countries to speed up the delivery of imported food, state radio reported on Thursday.
Amid fears of worsening food shortages around election time, Mugabe said 500 000 tonnes of the maize meal staple and other grains were purchased from Malawi, Zambia and South Africa, the radio said.
”There have been transport problems. We are sending Zimbabweans to these countries to speed up loading and delivery,” state radio quoted Mugabe telling supporters at campaign rallies east of Harare.
The country normally consumes about 1,8-million tonnes of grain a year and in February about four million of the 12-million population received emergency food aid in the former regional breadbasket, according to United Nations food relief agencies.
Harvesting in coming weeks is expected to yield less than half the nation’s food requirements.
The latest crop assessment issued on Tuesday in a joint report by the government and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation said farmers failed to plant enough food crops largely due to daily power and water outages and chronic shortages of hard currency, fuel, seed and fertilisers.
Another more detailed crop assessment will be carried out next month after seasonal harvesting has begun in earnest, the report said.
The UN said in a separate report 4,1-million Zimbabweans receiving food aid last month were to continue receive handouts throughout the harvests starting this month but of another one million city dwellers across the country estimated to need food aid, only about one-third were receiving it.
”In urban areas, high levels of food insecurity persist and are likely to worsen due to food shortages on formal markets, rising prices and inefficient maize procurement, distribution and pricing policies,” the UN said.
Analysts trace Zimbabwe’s economic collapse to a government decision in 2000 to transfer land from white farmers to black Zimbabweans, which resulted in often violent seizures of farms and disrupted the agricultural-based economy in the former food exporter. The government blames Western powers it says are hostile for the meltdown. – Sapa-AP