No need for food aid, says govt

The government of Zimbabwe says the country has produced enough food to meet domestic consumption requirements and will not require international aid, but independent crop forecasts suggest otherwise. Official news organisation ZIANA and the Herald newspaper quoted the Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister, Paul Mangwana, as saying that "we don't need food aid from outside the country. We generally believe we produced enough for local consumption, and we have told our international partners about this". Although there were "some areas that would have food deficits, these would be covered through internal food distribution, and not imports", Mangwana was quoted as saying. The latest announcement follows the cancellation of a planned crop assessment mission by United Nations agencies in Zimbabwe after the government withdrew its participation. The UN assessments are conducted at the invitation and with the participation of the host government. According to aid agencies, some 5.5 million rural Zimbabweans and 2.5 million people in urban areas were in need of food aid up to the latest harvest, which began in April. The World Food Programme (WFP) has been conducting general and targeted food aid distributions since the food security crisis began two years ago. WFP spokesperson in Zimbabwe, Makena Walker, told IRIN on Wednesday that the agency had received no official notification from the government that it would not require any post-harvest emergency food aid. In the meantime, WFP's targeted distributions, such as school feeding and home-based care activities, would continue indefinitely. "We hope to reach 650,000 beneficiaries this month," Walker said, adding that "there will be no general distributions in May and June because harvest has come in". The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said the government's latest assessments for the 2003/04 season indicated that 2.4 million mt of the staple, maize, would be produced. The Herald reported that while the country "was forced to import food and appeal for assistance from international donors in the last two years ... it experienced good rains in the 2003/04 agricultural season and indications were that Zimbabwe could produce a bumper harvest". These projections differ from those of independent agencies. In its March food security update, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) noted that the "Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development released optimistic production estimates for 2003/04". It argued that "historical data, the reduced contribution of the large-scale commercial farming sector to maize production, the poor rainfall distribution in the early half of the season, reduced use of fertiliser and limited labour for weeding, provide bases for questioning this optimistic outlook". FEWS NET added that "assuming the government's [planted] area estimates are accurate, production ranges are likely to fall between 1.2 million mt and 1.7 million mt". National consumption is estimated at around 1.8 million mt. A report commissioned last month by the German development agency Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, "Famine in Zimbabwe", predicted shortfalls of between 600,000 mt and 900,000 mt. The uncertainty over crop forecasts, given the lack of a UN agency verification mission, could have serious implications for any humanitarian response if Zimbabwe needed to appeal for aid later in the year. The UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Zimbabwe, J Victor Angelo, observed in a statement on Tuesday that "credible production figures are an essential tool for planning purposes". He said the UN was "concerned that, should a food assistance need be identified later in the year, and were the government to issue an appeal at that time, a very rapid response may not be possible". The UN would not have been in a position to carry out an assessment of needs at the time of harvest, "and hence, the international community might be hesitant to respond; and WFP would have scaled back operation, and would need time to build up the necessary operational capacity," Angelo warned.