Shortages threaten Zimbabwe with harvest disaster
Some of those warnings were issued Tuesday in testimony before Parliament’s agriculture committee, the state-run Herald newspaper and ruling party-allied Daily Mirror reported.
Fertiliser companies told the committee their warehouses were empty. The Zimbabwe Seed Traders Association said there was only 28,660 tons of maize seed in the country, slightly more than half of what is needed.
The Agricultural Dealers and Manufacturers’ Association has run out of plough disks for the first time in its history. There also are key shortages of irrigation piping, pumps, pesticides and other chemicals.
“The information you have given us simply shows that there is no season,” said committee chairman Walter Mzembi.
The seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, combined with years of drought, have crippled Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based economy. About 4 million people will need food aid before the next harvest in what was once a regional breadbasket, according to UN estimates. “This coming season’s production prospects are the worst since 1980 independence due to input shortages and the lack of a strong message to allow all farmers produce with confidence,” Doug Taylor-Freeme, president of the mostly white Commercial Farmers Union, told The Associated Press yesterday. The government of President Robert Mugabe claims to have settled 300,000 black families on former white-owned farms, but UN agencies report many are derelict, with irrigation and housing vandalised, and livestock stolen or slaughtered. Mugabe has promised $287 million in assistance to black farmers.
But Edward Raradza, vice president of the black Zimbabwe Farmers’ Union, said 60% of the funds advanced by the government for cropping had not reached their intended beneficiaries. His organisation represents 800,000 families in communal farming areas.
