Zimbabwe imports maize from its own commercial farmers

The Zimbabwe government has indicated that it will intensify its maize imports from neighbouring Zambia under the newly launched economic blueprint ZIM - ASET.

The blueprint Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio Economic Transformation (Zim Aset) as adopted by the politburo on Wednesday last week has four cluster areas to address led by the Food and Security Cluster. Under the cluster the government will as a short measure intensify the importation of maize to feed the starving population from neighbouring Zambia.

As a long term measure to ensure food security and nutrition, Government will re-establish financial support for agriculture so that farmers increase production, productivity and product quality. Government would also recapitalise and capacitate AgriBank and the Grain Marketing Board while the Presidential Input Scheme would also continue at household and community level according to the document produced by the policy department chaired by Professor Jonathan Moyo.

Responding to a question from MDC T chief whip Innocent Gonese at parliament last week, Agriculture Minister Joseph Made indicated that government had already received 4 000 metric tonnes of maize of the anticipated 150 000 metric tonnes sourced from Zambia on a government to government agreement. The maize import is delayed by lack of funds to transport the grain which is available in large quantities in Zambia amongst reports that about 2.2 million Zimbabweans are in urgent need of food aid.

In supreme irony, most (if not all) of the grain imported to Zimbabwe from Zambia is produced by evicted former Zimbabwean commercial farmers which Zambia enticed with land at the hype of Zimbabwe's chaotic land grab. International news agencies recently flighted tonnes of grain being off loaded in bags marked in the name of Michael Handris, a former Karoi commercial farmer. Several other such bags were flighted in international media amongst reports that GMB has ordered the repackaging of the maize upon its arrival.

Zambia accommodated thousands of former Zimbabwean commercial farmers that were being evicted from Zimbabwe in the early 2000s immediately transforming Zambia's food reserves. Zambia and other Southern African countries literally depended on Zimbabwe's food production for many years before Zimbabwe's food production suffered a huge drop from bread basket to basket case in recent years.