Shortages of food worsen in Zimbabwe

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Food shortages in Zimbabwe have rapidly worsened and regular supplies not provided by aid agencies remained "grossly inadequate," the World Food Program said Thursday.

While about 7.2 million people -- more than half the population -- now need emergency food aid, donor food only reached 4.5 million Zimbabweans this month, the agency said.

Since September the number of people needing food has risen by half a million as a result of shortfalls in government food imports and yields.

Kevin Farrell, WFP country director for Zimbabwe, said the agency and its 12 partner charities expected to provide food assistance to 5 million people in March.

Increasing numbers of vulnerable poor in urban areas were not included in assistance programs, he said.

"Between the beginning of the year and the next harvest in April and May is an extremely critical period with hunger at its worst," Farrell said.

According to its own figures, the government imported about 680,000 tons of food in the past year.

"Food available from non-humanitarian sources is grossly inadequate. We are concerned it is simply not sufficient" to meet the needs of people not receiving aid handouts, Farrell said.

The government estimates the new harvest will yield about 600,000 tons of staple grains this year, down from about 2.1 million tons produced in 2000 when Zimbabwe was a net food exporter.

Even if food was readily available for sale, rural and urban poor have no money to pay for it, Farrell said.

Donors have provided 83 percent of funds needed for the year- long WFP relief effort that will be renewed in June.

According to the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe has one of the world's highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection -- about 25 percent of the population -- and the food and nutrition crisis has hastened deaths from AIDS and related illnesses.

Zimbabwe's food shortages have been blamed on erratic rains and the government's chaotic and often violent program to nationalize thousands of white-owned farms since February 2000.

Only about 500 white farmers, out of some 4,000 three years ago, remain on their land. Farrell said many blacks resettled on former white farms had not grown enough food for themselves and are suffering the effects of malnutrition.

The WFP, in its latest briefing paper, said a combination of drought, government price controls, the state monopoly on grain imports, AIDS and the drop in commercial corn production has stripped Zimbabwe of its "former status as southern Africa's breadbasket."