SPECIAL FEATURE
FOOD POLITICS THREATEN VULNERABLE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY
The issue of partisan distribution of food in Zimbabwe is currently a burning issue
causing a high magnitude of concern. While shortages of the staple maize in the
Southern African country have been perennial since the turn of the millennium when
the agrarian reform took a fast track momentum which forced 4 000 commercial white
farmers off the land to pave way for over 400 000 landless black people. While this
gave land to the landless, it also essentially gave way to a considerable reduction in
agricultural produce as some re-distributed land lay fallow; or in some instances the
new “owners’ plain failed to produce to capacity due to financial and technical knowhow deficits, among other challenges, this season around the lack is set to be worse
for ordinary citizens in the country side.
Every year the country has produced less than adequate stocks of maize, that is
nothing new, but this cropping reason comes against a backdrop of a severe drought –
the most severe since 1992, experts have said.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Perception Survey for this
year, the food crisis currently facing the nation would escalate to starvation soon, with
people in the rural areas set to be the worst hit.
The grim predictions come as Zimbabwe was recently ranked number 18 in the top 20
countries most prone to hunger in the years 2015-16, after scoring 30,8 on a hunger
index out of 50 by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
The organisation said the southern African country, which has been receiving
unreliable rainfall in the past two years — and once a regional breadbasket — was
going to see “starvation-ranking hunger” in 2016 due to the direct effect of the El
Niño.
El Niño is a climate cycle in the Pacific Ocean with a global impact on weather
patterns. The cycle begins when warm water in the western tropical Pacific Ocean
shifts eastward along the equator toward the coast of South America. The El Niño
affects different regions differently, with some areas recoding higher than normal
precipitation while others experience increased evaporation. During an El Niño, the
Pacific's warmest surface waters sit offshore of north-western South America.
Normally, warm water pools near Indonesia and the Philippines. Although the
southern part of Africa generally receives below-normal rainfall during El Niño years,
this cannot be accepted as a rule. El Niños occur every three to five years but may
come as frequently as every two years or as rarely as every seven years. Each event
usually lasts nine to 12 months. They often begin to form in March/April, reach peak
strength between December and January, and then decay by May of the following
year.
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