Zimbabwe
Drought conditions in several areas of Zimbabwe have resulted in poor harvests and subsequent shortages of maize meal, the staple food. Because of the drought, approximately 7.2 million mostly rural Zimbabweans need food aid through March this year. Millions of people who normally have the resources to purchase maize increasingly are unable to do so because of high prices and scarcity in local markets.
The overall maize harvest this year is down drastically from just two years ago, and areas under cultivation for food crops are less then 50 percent of what they were in the 1990s. Shortages of other food staples such as wheat, vegetable oil and sugar also exist nationwide, and there is little sign the shortages will ease.
The situation is compounded by an uncertain political climate, which makes worst-case planning scenarios much more problematic than those used during the previous food shortage of 1992, when regional food reserves were available and transport links were less dilapidated. The flow of food imports has been slow and it must increase if the food situation in the country is to somewhat stabilized. Currently even maize that is available on the market is too expensive to be accessible to average people. With a lack of income generating activities and the failure of price freezes and controls, people, especially rural inhabitants, are reliant on food deliveries. Households are starting to resort to measures such as wild food consumption, gold panning, robbery, prostitution, and border trading to survive.
CARE's Response
In partnership with the World Food Programme, CARE is distributing maize and maize meal to 820,000 people and distributing seeds and fertilizer to more than 100,000 farmers. In addition, CARE's Safety Net project is helping communities in these areas through:
- Supplementary Feeding: providing one nutritious meal per day to more than 600,000 children through schools and community feeding points.
- Improved Access to Grain: helping rural traders procure and sell maize grain and wheat meal to rural families who have some resources, but very limited access to food.
- Community Reserve Building: establishing rural community-based savings clubs that provide simple, low-maintenance services to support household income-generating activities.
- Seed Diversity and Security: helping improve the capacity of small-scale farmers through the testing, demonstration and propagation of drought-resistant crops as well as the construction of local seed banks.
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