Posted on 12/25/2002 5:27:17 AM PST by Clive
Harare - Production of the staple food crop in Zimbabwe, where eight million are facing famine, is threatened by an acute shortage of maize seed and fertiliser, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The Agricultural Research and Extension Services (Arex) said in their latest crop and livestock report, cited by the state-run Herald newspaper, that "the problems associated with seed, fertiliser and draught power shortages persist" throughout the country.
But Agriculture Minister Joseph Made accused commercial seed producers of holding back inputs in a bid to undermine President Robert Mugabe's controversial land reform programme.
"We are aware that some companies are holding on to the seed crop because they do not want to complement the government's efforts under the land reform programme," Made told the Herald.
"All these are efforts meant to frustrate the ongoing land reform programme," he added.
Zimbabwe, which is threatened by one of the worst famines in memory, with more than two thirds of its 11.6 million people at risk, is almost half way through its current agricultural season.
Zimbabwe is the worst-hit among six southern African countries also facing famine.
Foreign aid agencies say the problem here has been exacerbated by disruptions to agriculture on white-owned farms acquired by the government for resettlement of new black farmers under a chaotic land reform programme. - Sapa-AFP
The world doesn't care, since he is the same color as they! Imagine the outcry if even one child had died of hunger while the honest, efficient Rhodesia regime was in place.
True.
But it is even worse than that.
Mugabe had evicted over 90 percent of the 4,500 commercial farmers in Zimbabwe and the remainder are still under threat of eviction.
Included in the evictions are the maize hybrid seed farms.
The farms have been cut up into small parcels, amny of which are sub-economic for veldt farming.
At best, some of the "settlers" (actually squatters) are alluvial soil farmers used to beast draughted, slash-and-burn, scratch agriculture on rich black alluvial soil irrigated entirely by rainfall or sooping from creeks. That type of agriculture simply doesn't work on the veldt. Velt farming is dry-land farming on nutrient poor red soil requiring fertilization and sophisticated drip irrigation from impounded water. There are instances of squatters ripping up the irrigation lines or ignoring them and sending the wives and chilren more than a kilometer to streams to fetch water.
At worst, most of the the squatters are city inhabitants who had iromantized visions of a bucolic life and the very best land was siezed by top level party cadre (so-called "cell phone farmers" who only see their land on weekends).
So the 2002 summer crop was markedly below norm, even for drought conditions (even in the drought, the irrigation dams are mostly full because of a paucity of crops to irrigate) The crop for the winter that just ended essentially failed and the crop for the summer that is now past planting time has not been planted.
The government has siezed maize supplies including ordinary reserves needed to feed households and employees and trumpeted the siezures as evidence of hoarding.
The government has set retail price controls based on an official foreign exchange rate of Z$55.00 to US$1.00 while the actual rate is 1800-to-1 which means that anyone selling food in Zim is doing so at a major loss. The failure of business to import staples to sell at a loss is deemed to be evidence of sabotage by traitors conspiring with the UK to return Zim to colonial status.
I have only scratched the surface of the problems. Zim is a textbook case of how to destroy a national economy by state interference in market mechanisms.
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