Zimbabwe faces more food shortages due to poor planning, lack of fertilizer and fuel as well as floods, farm organisations have said.
Zimbabwe, formerly a net grain exporter to southern Africa, has battled serious food shortages since 2001 when President Robert Mugabe's government seized farms from whites to resettle landless blacks.
"With these rains, a lot of fertilisers and nutrients have been leached from the soil and the crops are yellowing," said Philip Tavuyanago, director of the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (ZCFU). "Farmers need top dressing fertiliser, which is in serious short supply. Fuel is another snag."
President Mugabe's government -- which last year said it had invested heavily in grain production to end food shortages and halt costly imports -- had projected a 3 million tonnes maize crop in the 2007/8 season. The forecast was based on about 2 million hectares being put under the staple crop.
However, a recent report prepared by the government's agricultural technical and extension service (Agritex), revealed that just over 1.3 million hectares had been tilled and only 719,000 hectares of land had been put under maize. Agritex said the shortage of inputs, such as fuel, seed, fertiliser and chemicals had resulted in lower planting.
Incessant rains which have been pounding the country since December had also delayed planting and caused flooding in some parts.
Tavuyanago said while there had been a marked improvement in land preparation, prospects for higher production had been dimmed by the shortage of inputs. "In the absence of inputs, we might just have prepared big hectarages without yielding much," Tavuyanago said.
United Nations aid agencies Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have said 4 million Zimbabweans -- about a third of the population -- will require food aid by the first quarter of 2008.
State media has reported that Zimbabwe would need to import at least 1 million tonnes of maize after deliveries of the 2007 crop to the state grain procurer, the Grain Marketing Board, amounted to only 700,000 tonnes. The country requires about 1.8 million tonnes of maize for annual consumption.
Zimbabwe is also grappling with a severe economic crisis, blamed on Mugabe's policies. Inflation has rocketed to nearly 8,000 percent, the highest in the world.
Mugabe, 83 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies mismanaging the economy and says it has been undermined by western countries opposed to his land reforms.
