WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2002-10-02 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 10/2/2002 5:46:58 PM
Zim: Masvingo Maize Harvest will last one day!
[I have heard that a lot of blacks who were “given land” are actually packing their bags and leaving “their land”. They can’t survive on it! Nice going eh? Ruined farms and now everyone is suffering and dying. 60% of Zimbabwe’s foreign exchange is coming from ex-Patriate Zimbabweans sending their families money. Blacks are leaving by the planeload. Here in South Africa, Zimbabweans are buying food and paying people to take it to their families up there! People coming here for business, buy food in South African supermarkets to take to Zimbabwe. In this way, countless people are being kept alive through gifts of food from blacks who have fled here. The border is clogged with traffic. The struggle for survival is on. Jan]
ZIMBABWE is expected to harvest about 6,000 tonnes of maize – enough to feed the nation for one day – from an ambitious winter cropping programme launched by the government in April this year, farming industry officials said this week.
They said that just over 6,000 tonnes of winter maize were expected to be harvested from about 1,500 hectares of land put under maize at the ambitious Masvingo Food Initiative which the government says will alleviate the food crisis presently faced by Zimbabwe.
The government however says more than 1 800 hectares of land were planted with the irrigated maize crop and are expected to produce at least 18,000 tonnes of the crop.
But the officials said the maximum yield expected from the project was four tonnes an hectare. Harvesting of the winter crop is expected to start in the next few weeks.
“The expected harvest is enough to meet the country’s maize requirements for one to one-and-a-half days only, which means the initiative is just a scratch on the surface as far as the severity of the food crisis is concerned,” a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture told the Financial Gazette.
Zimbabwe, which consumes about 6,000 tonnes of maize a day, faces a severe food crisis blamed on a severe drought and the government’s chaotic land reform programme, which has almost decimated the country’s key agricultural sector.
An estimated seven million people, or half the population, now face starvation and are surviving on handouts from international aid donors and the government.
The Masvingo Food Initiative, which took advantage of land donated by Triangle and Hippo Valley estates in the hot and arid southern Lowveld region, was one of the measures adopted by the government to alleviate unprecedented human suffering in the wake of failed attempts by former finance minister Simba Makoni to raise funds for food imports.
The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP), which is currently delivering more than 11,000 tonnes of grain a month to Zimbabweans, has also appealed for US$507 million in food aid for six southern African countries.
But donors have so far committed about one third of that amount and the WFP is negotiating for another third in donations.
Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) shadow agriculture minister Renson Gasela said the best that could come out of the Masvingo maize project was 9,000 tonnes, assuming that the average yield is five tonnes a hectare and that 1,800 hectares were indeed planted.
“The Masvingo initiative is therefore not something that will save this country from starvation,” he said.
Earlier this month the MDC was denied permission to import more than 100 tonnes of grain to feed starving Zimbabweans amid charges by the government the food had been donated by Britain and was meant to endear the opposition party to the rural electorate.
Since then the food aid has been detained at the Beitbridge border with South Africa.
Source: The Financial Gazette, Zimbabwe
Posted: 26-September-2002
URL: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/758058…br>