My brother Peter Michael passed an article in the Wall Street Journal on to me via email at the same time that my cousin Stewart handed me the printed version. Unfortunately it can't be accessed online unless you have a subscription. Summary: Zimbabwe--Once a Breadbasket, Today Cant Feed Itself. Politics, Drought, AIDS Bring A Severe Food Shortage; Aid is Coming up Short. Here is an exerpt:
By ROGER THUROW
PUPU, Zimbabwe -- There will be no traditional Christmas goat roasting on a spit here this year, and no Christmas chickens, either. The prospect of Christmas beer dried up long ago, along with the supplies of sorghum used for brewing.The big holiday helpings of corn meal will be smaller than usual, for corn, the nation's staple food, is the scarcest commodity of all."We don't have enough food to really celebrate this year," says Luka Philip Ngwenya. "Christmas will just come and go like any other day." For most people, that will mean a small ration of corn meal, supplemented with the roasted Mopani caterpillars and dried wild fruit that have helped keep villagers alive for the past couple of months.
Mr. Ngwenya, a 63-year-old peasant farmer, stretched out under a dying Msasa tree in one of the hungriest places in one of the hungriest countries in the world.
He waited patiently, along with hundreds of his neighbors, for the monthly distribution of food from the U.N.'s World Food Program and the aid organization, World Vision.
On that day, 4,008 people were fed -- 70% of the local population. Throughout Zimbabwe, international humanitarian agencies are gearing up to feed more than six million people, which is more than half of the entire nation. That makes Zimbabwe, proportionally at least, the neediest recipient of food aid in the world.
The feeding of such multitudes is a surprising sight in a country that several years ago was selling up to 500,000 metric tons of surplus food to the WFP for distribution to starving people elsewhere. Now, it receives 500,000 tons of food aid. Zimbabwe today is home to many of the same factors, natural and man-made, that are propelling an increase in the number of hungry people world-wide -- even though more food is being produced than ever before. President Robert Mugabe, in the face of rising opposition, pushed a fast-track land reform that confiscated white-owned commercial farms and redistributed the property to loyal supporters of his Zanu-PF party. Many of the new owners were inexperienced in running large agribusinesses and food production has fallen dramatically.In Christmases past, as recently as four or five years ago, when Zimbabwe was a breadbasket of Africa, this was a time of communal feasting and Christian celebration. But now, most families don't have enough for themselves, let alone for sharing. Rampant food shortages and an inflation rate soaring toward 700% have made goats and chickens too expensive to eat.
Today only a couple of hundred of the 4,500 confiscated farms are still fully functioning. Harvests of food staples plummeted by as much as 90%, livestock herds dwindled and production of the main cash crop, tobacco, slumped badly.
The resulting dearth of foreign currency has caused shortages of seed, fertilizer and fuel, which in turn have led to a drop in production on the peasant farms. Unemployment, which has soared to 70%, combines with the inflation rate to make whatever food is available too expensive for most of the population. A goat now costs as much as the equivalent of $200, which would nearly consume a teacher's monthly salary. Human-rights groups have charged that the ruling party has doled out food that is being produced locally in exchange for electoral support.
Comments