Zimbabwean food shortages © Obinna Anyadike / United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network

Land reforms have aimed to reverse the racially divisive distribution of the colonial period but the government's expropriation of properties managed by white farmers proved unplanned and chaotic, allowing the broader infrastructure of the sector to collapse. Government policies have failed to ensure adequate training and access to seed and fertiliser inputs, irrigation structures have not been maintained and price controls have diminished the basic incentive to farm. Drought and floods have been partly to blame but, with stories circulating that many farmers find it more profitable to sell firewood than tend their land, the government is now stepping in to reclaim some of the expropriated farms.

Projections for the 2008/09 cereal harvest are 40% down on 2007, meeting less than half of Zimbabwe's own requirements. Although imported food is arriving from Malawi and Zambia, Zimbabwe lacks the foreign exchange necessary to feed its own people. Having refused entry to the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme (WFP) in 2006, the government has backtracked in allowing these agencies to return. Their prediction is that, by the peak of the hunger season in March 2009, 5.1 million people will be in need of food aid, about 40% of the population and an increase of 1.0 million over 2008. The UN has already launched a massive humanitarian appeal for 2008 for over $300 million. Donors will be concerned that the government's aid distribution will overcome a history of inefficiency and bias at election times.

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