World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Nearly 1.7 million Zimbabweans will require food assistance in the 2010/11 season despite the recent recovery of the country's troubled agriculture sector, United Nations agencies said in a report on Tuesday.(..)"Despite the improved availability of food, up to 1.68 million people will need food assistance because prices remain comparatively high for families with low incomes and little or no access to U.S. dollars or South African rand," co-author Jan Delbaere of the U.N. World Food Programme said in the report.

From breadbasket of Africa to African basket case — that’s Zimbabwe. A country rooted in agriculture that now must import maize and wheat, 7 million of its people targeted for assistance this year by the World Food Program. At least 85 per cent of the population is unemployed, 49 per cent malnourished according to WFP figures, with 83 per cent living on less than $2 a day.

Tinashe, a single mother of three living in Mbare township in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, regularly misses a meal so as to stretch her US$90 a month income, and occasionally gives her children food left over from her employers' meals at the middle-class household where she is a domestic worker. (..) "Nearly 12,000 child deaths each year may be attributable to maternal and child under-nutrition", the latest Zimbabwe Food and National Nutrition Survey noted. The survey was produced by the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF), the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) (..).

Algerian government has handed over 397 of the 2 500 tonnes of rice it pledged to assist Zimbabwe with. (..) World Food Programme country director Mr Felix Bamezon also expressed his gratitude. WFP facilitated ferrying the 397 tonnes of rice from Beira and will distribute it to vulnerable groups.

A UN agency says Zimbabwe will need humanitarian aid this year after crop failures caused a grain shortfall of about half a million metric tons. The World Food Program said on Wednesday that one-third of the country's districts - mainly in the south and east - failed to produce enough food to meet their needs in coming months.

Zimbabwe is facing a cereal deficit of 459 000 metric tones, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in a new report released Monday. The WFP said in a crop and livestock assessment report that 20 out of the country’s 62 districts had failed to produce enough food to meet consumption requirements (..).

Ongoing farm seizures in Zimbabwe pose one of the greatest threats to the hopes of a better life by the thousands of people displaced by the country’s political crisis, according to the World Food Programme. The UN agency said most of Zimbabwe’s internally displaced persons (IDPs) faced an uncertain future due to the disturbances prohibiting stability in the key agricultural sector.

An international food relief agency, The World Food Programme, has made a timely intervention to rescue embattled Shabanie and Mashava Mine (SMM) workers from starvation.(..)WFP Zimbabwe's programme director, Kevin Farrell, told Radio VOP in an interview Thursday that his organisation, despite focusing mainly in the rural areas, was touched by the plight of the more than 5 000 workers who were vulnerable.

More than 200,000 hectares of the current maize crop in Zimbabwe has been written off after being scorched during the dry spell that affected the country during December and January.(..)FEWSNET said the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) planned to scale up its food assistance activities from January to cover the food insecure population.

The United Nations WFP on Thursday said its UN Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) in Ghana had airlifted 150 metric tons of urgently needed relief items to victims of the Haiti earthquake.(..)Mr. Ismail Omer, WFP Representative in Ghana said:" this is the first time the Accra deport has airlifted items to a country outside Africa since it began operations in 2007. To date, we have responded to emergencies in 17 African countries including Ghana. We're happy to help Haiti at a critical time like this".