With the number of Zimbabweans requiring food aid estimated to hit five million by January and rising world food prices making imports more expensive, the prognosis isn’t good.
That’s why Tearfund is looking to work with church and Christian partners in Zimbabwe to provide thousands of people with food for the next harvest season.
Seeds for maize, sorghum and ground nuts are virtually non-existent in Zimbabwe, so Tearfund is to supply them to 400 families.
Fertiliser will also be provided, something that otherwise would be outside the affordability of Zimbabweans, evidenced by a metric tonne now costing US$890 compared with $250 a year ago.
Crop failure
The country’s agricultural sector is going through a time of considerable strain. Just 28 per cent of the country’s grain needs have been harvested.
The winter wheat crop was negligible due to a lack of fertiliser, electricity shortages affecting irrigation schemes and election violence displacing the farming workforce.
And the overall standard of living for Zimbabwe’s 13 million people remains chronically bad.
When basic items such as bottles of water start costing your citizens trillions of dollars, you know the wheels have well and truly come off your economy.
Empty shelves
Tearfund’s Karyn Beattie has just returned from Bulawayo and reports of a country where the signs of collapse are all around.
‘The supermarket shelves are empty,’ said Karyn. ‘There’s very little available for people to buy but some highly exorbitantly priced goods.’
She cites a bottle of water costing 2.5 trillion Zimbabwean dollars which, at the time, was the equivalent of a teacher’s monthly salary.
Little wonder that many teachers have stopped going to work and those that do say they are doing `community service’, an ironic recognition of their work-for-nothing status .
The main survival fall-backs are buying food on the black market or getting goods by going across the borders to Zimbabwe’s neighbours.
Join with the church in Zimbabwe as they feed the poor by making a donation and by praying.