Thursday, August 07, 2008

Food shortage facing Zimbabwe

http://www.religiousintelligence.com/news/?NewsID=2430

[Religious Intelligence] 7 Aug 2008--Zimbabwe could continue grappling with a severe grain shortage as the government has only secured 60 per cent of the country's seed maize requirements for use in this year's agricultural season.

Agriculture Minister Rugare Gumbo made the startling revelations when he addressed farmers at the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) annual congress held in Harare yesterday.

With less than two months before the start of the 2008-09 agricultural season, which gets underway in October, Gumbo disclosed that the government has only secured 30,000 tonnes of maize seed out of a required 50,000 tonnes. Gumbo said the government had committed scarce foreign currency resources to import the bulk of the 30,000 tonnes of maize seed. He said only 11,300 tonnes of maize seed was sourced from local seed houses while 18,700 tonnes was imported from neighbouring countries.

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