Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: …Humanitarian agencies say at least two million Zimbabweans currently need food aid, and the figures are set to rise as a result of drought and a decade of agricultural mismanagement.…Zimbabwe was a food exporter until President Robert Mugabe launched a controversial land reform programme in 2000, a politically charged and violent campaign to forcibly resettle mainly white commercial farms with new black farmers. The ensuing chaos undermined the agriculture-backed economy, which shrank to half its 2000 size. The country has relied on donor food ever since.
Deon Theron, president of the Commercial Farmers Union of Zimbabwe, blames the land reform programme for the country's food crisis. "We used to be a country that could export to the region and now we can't even feed ourselves," he said.
…This year, Zimbabwe is set to harvest 1.5 million tonnes of grain, leaving the country with a 185,000-tonne shortfall, according to a crop assessment report by the Zimbabwean government and the United Nations.
Elizabeth Luanga, UN humanitarian coordinator in Zimbabwe, said a lack of funding from donors this year would put extra pressure on aid agencies to provide food relief to affected families, especially in rural areas. Luanga said the food aid programme has only 26 percent of the money it needs. "Unfortunately, in 2010 we have so far been confronted with serious cuts in funding," she said. "It is clear that humanitarian assistance is still urgently required."
Locator map of Zimbabwe by Rei-artur , Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License
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