Dry spell threatens maize output

By Cris Chinaka

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s maize output is under threat from a dry spell that could mean more food shortages in coming months and a disasterous season for the country’s farmers, a cabinet minister said on Wednesday.

Agriculture Minister Joseph Made told state media that a lack of rain in the past few weeks and a severe fertiliser shortage had left many crops in a bad state, and a top industry official said farmers faced a disastrous season.

Zimbabwe has suffered severe grain shortages since 2000, which critics blame on President Robert Mugabe’s drive to seize white-owned commercial farms to resettle landless blacks.

Made said many districts across the southern African country, including its major maize production belts, have experienced long dry spells and crops were moisture-stressed.

“It’s not looking rosy,” he said on Zimbabwe Television.

Zimbabwean farmers had planted one million hectares of the staple maize compared to 900,000 hectares last year and Made said authorities were preparing for their first national crop assessment for the Nov-April farming season.

Zimbabwe’s unity government, formed by Mugabe and rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai last February, had forecast the country’s return to food self-sufficiency on the back of economic and political reforms after a decade of crisis.

POWER SHORTAGES

The government had projected a 2.5 million tonne yield of the staple grain in the current farming season, double last year’s output.

Made said that in addition to a shortage of top-dressing fertiliser, commercial farmers were also struggling to irrigate their crops because of electricity shortages, and he warned those with fertiliser not to apply it while the dry spell persists.

“Some crops might get worse if they are top dressed…because it is better to delay than to kill their crops,” he said.

Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union acting president Isaiah Marapira said replanting was not advisable as the season was too advanced.

“The situation is bad countrywide. The season is already out in terms of planting and there could be a disaster if does not rain this weekend,” he told the official Herald newspaper.

Zimbabwe, once a regional bread-basket, has survived on food aid for more than a decade under a political and economic crisis many blame on Mugabe’s land seizures.

But Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party says the country’s problems have been mainly due to intermittent droughts, Western sanctions and sabotage by those opposed to his land redistribution programme.

Mugabe argues land seizures are meant to correct ownership imbalances created by British colonialism.