World Food Programme Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Britain pledged 5 million pounds ($8.24 million) to Zimbabwe on Monday but made clear more reforms were needed before it would start large-scale development aid to the shattered country. (..) The extra British money will be channelled through the World Food Programme and charities.

The head of an International Monetary Fund team arrived in Zimbabwe Monday to assess the coalition government's economic policies and the country's still enormous humantarian needs, officials said. (..) According to the IMF, the team will assess foreign exchange inflows and the state of international reserves and will meet with the World Food Programme about the country's food needs.

Zimbabwe could emerge from its perennial food shortage after increasing three-fold its grain production this season, a United Nations agency claims in a new report.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported in a fresh report Friday that this year’s grain production had nearly tripled over the previous harvest, with an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of grain having been produced, compared with about 564,000 metric tons harvested in 2007-2008.

The death rate was slowing down but the threat of cholera remains "very real", says a report released by the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (...) The report also said Zimbabwe is the most food aid dependent country in the world. Also, nearly 55% of children who died of cholera were malnourished. "Per capita, Zimbabwe is now the most food aid dependent country in the world. The World Food Programme believes that seven million people are in need of food assistance -- somewhere between 65% and 80% of the population," the report states. "The UN believes that 54% of all children who have died from cholera were malnourished, with 47% of the country's population undernourished." The food crisis was caused by several factors including hyperinflation which disenfranchised many agriculture farmers, the report states. "Zimbabwe's fields are sown with substandard seed, scavenged often from granaries or from the side of the road. It is extraordinarily unlikely that the 2009 harvest will significantly surpass 2008 -- the worst in the country's history," says the report

Zimbabwe is the most food aid dependent country in the world, aid agencies said today. (..) Per capita, Zimbabwe is now the most food aid dependent country in the world. The World Food Programme believes that seven million people are in need of food assistance - somewhere between 65 and 80 percent of the population," the report states.

Zimbabwe is bracing for another year of food insecurity, amid bleak expectations from both the main maize harvest in April and the coming winter wheat crop. (..) "It [the harvest] is going to be poor, we just don't know how poor," WFP's southern Africa spokesman, Richard Lee, told IRIN.

Most families, comprising mostly communal farmers in the districts, have had to depend on food handouts from benevolent organizations such as the World Food Programme (WFP) because they did not have enough resources to cultivate the arid terrain in the area With the situation having not improved, local authorities have already requested WFP to extend food aid programmes until families have enough food and are in a position to sustain themselves.

Malawi could this year export the stable food, maize, to Zimbabwe again following Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security indications of another bumper harvest, Malawi's Finance Minister Goodall Gondwe has hinted. (...)Analysts have linked the persistent food shortages in Zimbabwe to the seizure of white owned farms, a development they cite for leading to decreased crop productivity. The situation has prompted the World Food Programme to initiate various interventions in the bid to save people from starvation.

Farmers have already felt the first effects of changing climatic conditions. In 2006, the production of maize, the main staple in the region, fell short by 2.18 million metric tonnes due to droughts in Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Flooding in the Zambezi basin has been affecting Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, said Musvoto. Both Seychelles and Zambia have been experiencing a mixture of increased droughts and increased flooding. The World Food Programme (WFP) announced in January that about 6.5 million people will need food aid in Southern Africa by the end of April.

Zimbabwe's maize output is likely to fall 5 percent in 2008/09 despite a good season, the main farmers union said on Thursday, due to a new wave of farm invasions and farmers' inability to afford seed and fertiliser. [...] The slump in farm output has caused widespread food shortages across the country, where the U.N's World Food Programme says about 5.5 million people have needed food aid since the beginning of this year. Thousands of white farmers have fled Zimbabwe since the land seizures began in 2000, and the CFU says the few commercial farmers left cannot produce enough to feed the country.