Posted on 06/18/2008 10:21:41 AM PDT by blam
Five million face hunger in Zimbabwe, UN says
Last Updated: 3:39PM BST 18/06/2008
The United Nations has warned that more than five million Zimbabweans could be threatened by hunger next year due to a steady drop in food production coupled with the world's highest rate of inflation.
Robert Mugabe's seizure of land continues to take its toll
The Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Food Program said in a joint report that an estimated two million people in Zimbabwe will not have enough to eat in the summer months.
That figure is projected to rise to 3.8 million people after September and to about 5.1 million between January and March 2009, as the impact of President Robert Mugabe's seizure of land from commercial farmers continues to take its toll. The population is just over 12 million people.
The southern African nation is predicted to produce 575,000 tons of its main seasonal crop of maize, a drop of 28 per cent compared with last year, which was already some 44 per cent below 2006 government figures. Other crops are expected to be similarly dented.
"Poverty has increased for the tenth year in a row and there is an annual inflation estimated at 355,000 percent," said Kisan Gunjal, an FAO food emergency officer who worked on the report. "That is different than any other period in the history of Zimbabwe."
The report, which follows a four-week mission to Zimbabwe in May, said this year's poor production has followed several years of declining yields.
The report also blames adverse weather, late delivery of seeds and shortages of fertilizers, as well as poor infrastructure.
The economic slide of the impoverished nation, which was once the region's breadbasket, has been blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector after often violent seizures of farmland from whites.
Earlier this month, Mr Mugabe's government also ordered aid groups to suspend field work indefinitely, accusing them of working with the opposition to topple him.
The freeze has put millions who depend on food aid at the mercy of the government's own distribution system. The UN has said the order hampers aid delivery to more than four million people.
Zim Ping.
Just like the Ukraine in the 1930s.
So???? “Hey UN...........handle it if you’re so smart.” Leave us alone though. We have given enough. It’s time for those people to stand up for themselves instead sitting around starving. If they can’t do that, then that tells us where their mentality and abilitys are.
Mugabe created this problem, let him fix it.
Amazing to think that they were self-sufficient in food and exported food products at one time. Now they have starving people. Mugabe expropriated farmland from white farmers, to make his political statement, and evicted them. He gave the land to black farmers who are not nearly as productive. His blind racism and hatred of the white farmers caused him to take their land.
He literally has reaped what he has sown in his land.
Thanks for pointing out yet another one of your massive failings, United Nations. Now it’s up to the rest of the world to clean up another mess made by the liberal agenda.
Amazing... an MSM article not blaming a marxist food production disaster on a drought.
I will trade their position on the UN Human Rights Commission for a case of Hot Pockets.
The people who brought this disaster was the U.N.
and the international left who decried the racism
of Zimbawbwe’s white leaders.
>>That figure is projected to rise to 3.8 million people after September and to about 5.1 million between January and March 2009, as the impact of President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of land from commercial farmers continues to take its toll. The population is just over 12 million people.
Actually, the population WAS a little over 12 million in 2003, but between 2003 and 2007 3.4 million fled the country (3 million to South Africa alone). That leaves a little over 9 million of which 5 million (about 55%) are starving.
55% starvation rate, 1,000,000% inflation rate, 80% unemployment rate, and 24% HIV infection rate. Africa wins again!
But Al Gore, nor the environmentalists, could predict a minor catastrophe like Zimbabwe
Another disaster brought on by a socialist regime. On the other hand, pretty much everybody in Zimbabwe is a millionaire now. Due to runaway inflation the Gov’t recently printed a $50,000,000 note, which doesn’t buy a whole lot these days in Zimbabwe (this was a few weeks ago, they may be up to $500,000,000 notes by now for all I know).
But neither Al Gore,
nor the environmentalists
Let’s hear it for Robert Mugabe’s oogabooga kleptocracy, with which the Left can find no fault.
Coming to your neighborhood soon, courtesy of Barack Hussein Obama and his Winnie Mandela wanna-be wife and associates.
They are here in our midst, scheming and conspiring to bring the horrors of Zimbabwe upon us and our families in the name of "saving Mother Earth."
The whole story of contemporary Africa is a sad tale of tribalism, class warfare, and massive corruption- and one the media here "won't even talk about" because it does not fit within their template of acceptable ideas. I would also add, that both the press and entertainment arms of the media encouraged and supported the toppling of the old governments, i. e., they were in collusion, and complict in the fall. Now that things have worked out at variance with their idealistic fantasies, they simply "don't talk about it..." I truly hate to say, or even mention it, but I fear what is happening in Rhodesia will be the model for South Africa. What you have there is a state slipping from the rule of ( English-style ) Law into a state of tribalism- ruled by one corrupt & murderous strongman, who will naturally pander & cater to large groups that will help him cling to power. In such a system, minorities have "rights" only on a whim, which may be revoked instantly for no reason. I look upon the coming train wreck in Rhodesia- and next, South Africa- with great despair. Some of us saw this burgeoning with Jimmy Carter's muddle-headed "policies" over 20 years ago, and tried without success to get our government to nudge those nations... rather than shoving them with sanctions and pariah status. Things could have worked out better.
The title is a take-off from a forgettable book with an unforgettable name:
For more,
It would take ten years to produce enough food to cure hunger and besides think of all the energy required to produce it? Harry Reid says so.
Those 5 million peole need to hunt him down and elimnate him.
Those 5 million people need to hunt him down and elimnate him.
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