A good har­vest in Zim­babwe this year means less peo­ple will need food assis­tance. A new report says that food secu­rity is improv­ing in Zim­babwe, thanks to the har­vest, get­ting rid of the coun­tries cur­rency, and improved sup­ply and demand.

From this IRIN arti­cle that we found at Reuters Alert Net, we learn more details from the food secu­rity report issued by the Famine Early Warn­ing Sys­tems Net­work (FEWS NET) Food Secu­rity Outlook.

Food secu­rity has greatly improved since the 2008/09 sea­son, when nearly 7 mil­lion peo­ple were receiv­ing food assis­tance, com­pared with pro­jec­tions for the 2009/10 period, when an esti­mated 2 mil­lion to 2.4 mil­lion peo­ple will require assistance.

The UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion and UN World Food Pro­gramme Crop and Food Assess­ment Mis­sion fore­cast the 2009 cereal har­vest at 1.3 mil­lion tons, com­pared to 690,000 tons in 2008.

A bet­ter har­vest, lift­ing import duties on basic com­modi­ties, and the dol­lar­iza­tion of the econ­omy have ame­lio­rated food scarcity, the FEWS NET report said. The Zim­babwe dol­lar, which was fuelling hyper­in­fla­tion, was dis­con­tin­ued ear­lier his year.

The use of mul­ti­ple cur­ren­cies — South African rand, Botswana pula and US dol­lar — cou­pled with the intro­duc­tion of an across-the-board US$100 monthly wage for gov­ern­ment employ­ees in Feb­ru­ary 2009, has seen market-driven forces pro­vid­ing the impe­tus to fill shop shelves. Donor orga­ni­za­tions are also pay­ing med­ical staff a US$100 monthly stipend.

Accord­ing to the Con­sumer Coun­cil of Zim­babwe, in June 2009 the US$100 monthly salary was only suf­fi­cient for 20 per­cent of a family’s monthly food require­ments; even if other essen­tials, such as health, edu­ca­tion, cloth­ing and hous­ing were dis­counted, it would only cover about 70 per­cent of house­hold food expenses.

Zimbabwe’s econ­omy has been in reces­sion for a decade and around 94 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion are unem­ployed; many rely on remit­tances from fam­ily mem­bers work­ing in neigh­bour­ing states or fur­ther afield in Britain and the US.

“Between Jan­u­ary and June 2009, some basic food items fell by between 30 [per­cent] and 60 per­cent, but prices still remain between three and six times higher than the five-year aver­age for June [2009]. Between April and June 2009, maize grain price dropped by 31 per­cent and maize flour went down by 15 per­cent,” the report said.

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