Zimbabwean farmers' organisations warn of corn shortage

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Zimbabwean farmers' organisations have warned that the country may face a corn shortage, and corn crops may fail due to prolonged periods without rain.

The Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) and the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union (ZFCU) estimate that Zimbabwe might have to import up to a million metric tons of corn.

"All indications are that this season will be a total disaster. We will be very lucky if we get more than 500,000 tonnes," commented Deon Theron, who is the president of the CFU. In a telepone interview with Bloomberg, he also said that "this season is going to be a disaster."

Theron told the Reuters news agency that "we need about 1.8 million tonnes of maize, so over a million tonnes will have to be made up by imports."

"The dry spells came at precisely the wrong time," said ZFCU president William Nyabonda.

The organisations' estimates contradict preliminary estimates by the Zimbabwean unity coalition government, which suggest that the country's maize output will be 2.5 million tonnes this season, twice the output of 2009. The government now says it believes the output will be poor, but hasn't yet altered its projection, instead saying that it will conduct a nationwide crop assessment.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

Nelson Banya. "Zimbabwe's farmers warn of huge grain deficit" — Reuters South Africa, February 1, 2010
Brian Latham. "Zimbabwe Farmers See Corn Shortage; May Import 1 Million Tons" — Bloomberg, February 1, 2010

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.