Good Rains Fail to Boost Zimbabwe Farm Yields

Source from:  Cape Argus (Cape Town) February 1, 2006  02/06/2006

Zimbabwe's food crops have failed again in spite of ample rainfall this year throughout the country. President Robert Mugabe has blamed the weather for the six-year slump in Zimbabwe's agricultural production. But now rain falls like clockwork each day, and in-between storms the sun beats down, producing ideal conditions for record yields. Instead Zimbabwe will grow less than half what it needs to feed the population. Its foreign-exchange-earning crops, such as tobacco, flowers and coffee, are now almost too small to count. The Commercial Farmers' Union, the only organisation providing reliable agricultural data, says Zimbabwe will grow between 700 000 and 900 000 tonnes of maize. "In the main cropping areas we have seen good rain which fell on time, but there were serious shortages of fertiliser, fuel, and seeds. "In some areas, maize-planting which should have ended a month ago is still continuing," said Hendrik Olivier, director of the CFU. "It's going to be a very bad season." The CFU predicts that Zimbabwe will produce less flue-cured tobacco than Zambia this year, and that production will be at an all-time low of 25% of regular yields prior to the land-grab which began in 2000. Enditem