Zim food crisis deepens

Stores throughout the impoverished country were telling customers that bread would not be available until further notice.

Most bakeries closed last week as flour deliveries ceased, worsening the situation for a nation already struggling with severe shortages of fuel and food supplies, including its staple diet item of corn.

The government said on Tuesday it would import 100 000 tons of wheat to supplement this year's yield of 145 000 tons - well short of the government's 375 000-ton target.

The first 35 000 tons of the imported wheat were delayed, however, at the Mozambique port of Beira as authorities sought hard currency to pay for it.

Land grabs 'to blame'

Many have blamed Zimbabwe's agricultural decline on the government's seizures of white-owned commercial farms, begun in 2000, for redistribution to black owners.

A report by the Ministry of Agriculture's research department said, however, that chronic power outages had cut off irrigation and forced wheat farmers to abandon crops during germination - leading to yields of about 2-3 tons per hectare (0.8-1.2 tons per acre), far lower than the target of 5 tons a hectare (about 2.25 tons an acre), the official Sunday Mail newspaper reported.

The low harvest compounds Zimbabwe's troubles, as it faces its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with acute shortages of hard currency, food, most basic goods and fuel.

The UN World Food Program estimates at least 3 million people - a quarter of the population - will need emergency food aid before the April corn harvests.

Zimbabwe is facing daily power outages caused by shortages of coal and equipment. Breakdowns have plagued the western Hwange coal mine, which sits atop one of southern Africa's biggest coal deposits, and the country is importing nearly 40% of its power.

Outages rise 50%

The state power utility said on Friday that daily outages had increased by 50% since Mozambique reduced supplies over an outstanding debt of US$35m.

The outages have also affected the tobacco industry, which began planting seedlings this month, according to the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, a black farmers group. Many farmers had said that, with irrigation shut off, their seedlings had wilted and died, the union said.

Zimbabwe was once the second-largest tobacco exporter in the world after Brazil. Cigarettes have disappeared from shops, and on the thriving black market fetch at least 10 times the government's fixed price.

Meanwhile, cotton farmers anxious about seed shortages were resisting government advice to destroy their crops to prevent the spread of cotton blight, a bacterial disease that affects the plant, the agriculture ministry's research department said.

Newspapers were also in short supply on Sunday. The state newspaper company and the sole independent Sunday paper have cut print operations because of shortages of paper and materials and falling advertising on consumer goods no longer available in stores.

The independent Standard sold out on the streets before 07:00 GMT, vendors said.

- AP