More than one million people in Zimbabwe are going to need food aid between now and March next year, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). And sadly, the UN agency says it’s going to be short of funding to the tune of around $42 million – money which was intended to provide food to hungry Zim households in the first quarter of 2012.

Despite recent improvements in Zimbabwe’s grain production, the country has steadily been running out of food since 2000, when President Robert Mugabe began seizing white-owned farm land. While production of the nation’s staple maize has increased significantly – levels have risen from 500 000 tonnes in 2007/8 to 1,45 million tonnes in the last year – Zimbabwe will still not have the minimum two million tonnes required to get its population through the next 12 months in a self-sufficient manner.

Right now, it is estimated that 12 per cent of rural Zimbabweans will not be able to feed themselves adequately during the lean months before harvest season in March. Without sufficient funding from the WFP, it looks like there are very difficult times ahead for the embattled country.

[Source: Sowetan]