ZIMBABWE: It is government interference and inefficiency that have caused the failure of this year's maize crop, an eminent agricultural consultant tells William Corcoran in Harare
Zimbabwe's population will face famine conditions as early as June, according to an international agricultural consultant to donor and international aid agencies based in the southern African country.
The Zimbabwean government will need to import a minimum of 60,000 tonnes of maize a month by the end of next May if it is to stave off the food crisis. But according to agricultural consultant Michael Connelly, the country does not have the capacity to do so.
The Zimbabwean government has only been able to import 130,000 tonnes of maize over the last eight months. During the runup to Zimbabwe's general election tomorrow, President Robert Mugabe has repeatedly put the country's current food shortages down to a drought that is presently devastating many of country's staple food sources.
And he has promised his electorate at numerous pre-election rallies that the nation will not go hungry.
Mr Connelly, originally from Mullingar, who is a leading agricultural consultant to 17 African countries and was an adviser to Zimbabwe's National Agriculture Extension Department in the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture for five years, said that "government interference and bungling" was the cause of the pending crisis.
"The pending famine situation will not be the fault of the drought that is affecting the region. It has been government interference and bungling, as well as institutional mismanagement, that has caused the failure of the 2004-2005 maize crops.
"The maximum harvest this year is going to be 500,000 tonnes of maize, and the country needs two million tonnes per year. The government is lying about the food situation in the runup to the elections, and the real worry is a post-election freefall in terms of food shortages," he said.
According to a source working with the emergency programmes within UN agencies, the country has no grain reserves left because the harvest was also poor in 2003-2004.
The problem is compounded by the fact that Zimbabwe has very little foreign currency with which to buy vast amounts of food from other countries.
The Zimbabwean government has pointed to the Home Link initiative - a scheme that cashes in foreign exchange sent back to Zimbabwe by expatriates living in South Africa and Europe - as a way to accumulate foreign currency. Last year this initiative managed to take in $58 million, which is only 3.2 per cent of the nation's annual requirement.
"The country is on the verge of desperation and it's down to the government. The patterns of rain that have been experienced recently were predicted months ago," Mr Connelly said.
Officials were told that the country was going to have a normal start to the rainy season, but during the second half there were going to be problems.
"So it is about political mismanagement. They [ the government] did not plan properly. The fertiliser and seed needed to stave off this situation were not delivered until Christmas, which was way too late," Mr Connelly added.
He believes widespread institutional reform within the agricultural sector is needed if any form of efficiency is to return following the land seizures by the government over the past five years.
"Many of the institutions within Zimbabwe are now outdated, and there is no sign of them changing with the times. The country has enough hardware, in terms of irrigation schemes and the like.
"But the education and learning practices they use are out of date."