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Africa: Subsaharan
5 Million Still Need Food Aid in Zimbabwe
2004-06-25
Nearly 5 million people will need food aid over the next year despite government claims Zimbabweans won't need such relief, a U.N.-led group said Thursday.
Only five million?
At least 2.3 million rural people won't have enough food either because they don't grow enough or couldn't afford to purchase enough, Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee said in a report. The panel, composed of U.N. agencies and aid groups, said earlier that about 2.5 million urban people will need food aid because of deepening poverty. Officials of aid and humanitarian groups said the two assessments meant a total of about 5 million of the 12.5 million population will have to be given food help during the next several months. The government has hallucinated forecast record harvests this year of 2.4 million tons of cereals. But U.N. crop forecasters estimate Zimbabwe will produce only half its food needs of about 2 million tons this year. Zimbabwe was once a regional breadbasket. The often-violent seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, combined with erratic rains, have crippled the nation's agriculture-based economy since 2000.
I'm amazed the AP reporter had the timerity to note Bob's trangressions.
Opposition leaders accuse the government of lying about corn production and secretly importing food to use as a political weapon in the run-up to key parliamentary elections next year.
Posted by:Steve White

#16  Actually, I didn't either. Not directly. Laurence of the Rats, my brother who will likely kill me for linking him to me, thought of it during a HS debate. They were joking about improving US agriculture by nuking everyone else's wheatfields. Then they'd all come to us begging for food. So the evil thoughts were originally his.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2004-06-25 10:55:00 PM  

#15  SB: that's pretty cold and cynical - wish I'd thought of it first
Posted by: Frank G   2004-06-25 10:51:33 PM  

#14  Hey! We've got lots of radioactive waste! Let's crop dust their country with it and see if it helps. If not...well. We tried.
Posted by: Silentbrick   2004-06-25 10:41:08 PM  

#13  Let them eat Bob.
Posted by: Random thoughts   2004-06-25 10:31:57 PM  

#12  I'm amazed the AP reporter had the timerity to note Bob's trangressions.

I'm not sure the AP reporter ever considered them transgressions.
Posted by: Pappy   2004-06-25 4:17:18 PM  

#11  So how much corn is that?
It looks like about 2.45 S. Loads.
Posted by: Shipman   2004-06-25 11:49:02 AM  

#10  South Africa's done its best to keep Bob in power, even though they're supposedly worried about refugees, let Mbeki feed the starving
Posted by: Frank G   2004-06-25 10:54:25 AM  

#9  Call France, they're up for bat finally.

...which is worse: Starvation through deliberate government policy, or our own home grown Marxists who will find a way to blame everyone and everything other than the person/policy most directly responsible.

Badanov, GLAD TO SEE SOMEONE ELSE SAYING IT-this tendency to blame anyone but the person responsible seems to be a widespread mindset in the world today.
Posted by: jules 187   2004-06-25 10:48:34 AM  

#8  let bob feed them with all the newly aquired farms...as bomb-a-rama said..
Now go away and leave us Americans alone

say's it all
Posted by: Dan   2004-06-25 9:27:53 AM  

#7  Mojo - corn (maize) is 56 lbs a bushel, on average. It's textbook. Rice is 45 lbs, soybeans and wheat, 60 lbs. Barley, 48 lbs. Milo/sorghum , 56 lbs.

Zimbabwe's primary food crop used to be corn/maize, before Bob drove all his agricultural capitalists into Zambian exile, where a nasty flood season wrecked what looked like a pretty good bumper crop. So much for the Scotsman-predicted economic moral lesson. Oh, well. There's always next year.

This has been your industrial agriculture lesson for the day.
Posted by: Mitch H.   2004-06-25 9:08:03 AM  

#6  It appears we are well on our way to seeing this future come to fruition.

And when it does come I won't know whether to laugh or cry, or even which is worse: Starvation through deliberate government policy, or our own home grown Marxists who will find a way to blame everyone and everything other than the person/policy most directly responsible.
Posted by: badanov   2004-06-25 7:58:02 AM  

#5  Hmmm, let's see here...

5 million hungry people, at the doctor-reccomended minimum of 2300 calories a day, times 365 days in a year... carry the 11...

I get 4.2 x 10^12 calories for the year. An average ear of good ol' US corn has around 130-145 calories...call it 138...that's about 3 x 10^10 ears of corn. At around 70 lbs a bushel.

Lotsa luck.
Posted by: mojo   2004-06-25 3:09:06 AM  

#4  Ditto, #2. Didn't these same fine folks of Zimbabawe kill approx. 1500 white farmers not to mention they wontonly slaughtered game animals and left their carcasses to rot because they thought it was so much fun to see blood flow and gosh there'd be dumb old Uncle Sam who would surely come by with food soon enough...no worries. I hope we tell the UN to take a hike-go to the ME countries for $ -I'm told Islam is the religion of peace and kindness. Maybe the mullahs and shieks can dig into their Swiss bank accounts and cough up some $ for starving Zims.
Posted by: rex   2004-06-25 2:16:56 AM  

#3  The US needs to fund a new aid agency. With each bag of food, distribute an assault rifle and a map to Mugabe palace.
Posted by: ed   2004-06-25 2:11:18 AM  

#2  Nearly 5 million people will need food aid over the next year despite government claims Zimbabweans won't need such relief, a U.N.-led group said Thursday.

That's nice. Now go away and leave us Americans alone.
Posted by: Bomb-a-rama   2004-06-25 1:35:48 AM  

#1  Zim needs to clean house of Bob. Then maybe other countries will help. What about Bob? Bob is like Kimmie, he has run his country into the ground. Let the people run him into the ground first before we ever give aid.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2004-06-25 12:50:54 AM  

00:00