U.N.: Millions Will Go Hungry In Zimbabwe

U.N. food agencies said Wednesday that up to 5 million people could be threatened by hunger in Zimbabwe next year due to a steady drop in food production coupled with the world's highest rate of inflation.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program said in a joint report that an estimated 2 million people in Zimbabwe will face hunger between next month and September.

That figure is projected to rise to 3.8 million people later in the year and to about 5.1 million between January and March 2009.

The southern African nation is predicted to produce 575,000 tons of its main seasonal crop of maize, a drop of 28 percent compared with last year, which was already some 44 percent below 2006 government figures.

Total cereal availability for 2008-2009 is expected to be 848,000 tons, about 40 percent below last year's domestic supply, the report said. Production of sorghum and several other crops was also lower than the previous season, it said.

"Poverty has increased for the tenth year in a row and there is an annual inflation estimated at 355,000 percent," said Kisan Gunjal, an FAO food emergency officer who worked on the report. "That is different than any other period in the history of Zimbabwe."

The report, which follows a four-week mission to Zimbabwe in May, said this year's poor production has followed several years of declining yields.

The report also blames adverse weather, late delivery of seeds and shortages of fertilizers, as well as poor infrastructure.

The economic slide of the impoverished nation, which was once the region's breadbasket, has been blamed on the collapse of the key agriculture sector after often violent seizures of farmland from whites.

Earlier this month, President Robert Mugabe's government also ordered aid groups to suspend field work indefinitely, accusing them of working with the opposition to topple him.

The freeze has put millions who depend on food aid at the mercy of the government's own distribution system. The U.N has said the order hampers aid delivery to more than 4 million people.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will challenge Mugabe in the June 27 presidential runoff.