Zimbabwe has brought back a ban on maize imports to boost local farmers, and has grown enough of its own this year to supply its millers after a bumper harvest, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Improved rainfall boosted output and reversed a sharp decline last year when an\u00a0El Nino-induced drought\u00a0forced the country to rely on\u00a0imports, including genetically modified maize.<\/p>\n
“We assess the situation every day. We must protect local purchases from our local farmers,” Obert Jiri, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe, which consumes about 1.8 million metric tons of maize annually, saw production fall to around 800,000 metric tons in 2023\/24 from 2.3 million metric tons two years earlier.<\/p>\n
That crisis prompted the southern African government to temporarily lift import restrictions to ease food shortages.<\/p>\n
Jiri said this year’s recovery, combined with state support programmes such as the Pfumvudza smallholder scheme, has left the country with enough stocks.<\/p>\n
Independent analyst Paul Chidziva warned that Zimbabwe’s agriculture sector – which employs around 70% of the population – remains vulnerable to droughts and other extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.<\/p>\n
The government is promoting drought-tolerant crops such as sorghum and millet. Jiri said the current surplus provides a rare opportunity to reinforce food security and reduce reliance on imports.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe spent $300 million in scarce foreign currency importing maize in 2020 as successive droughts left more than half the population in need of food aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwe has brought back a ban on maize imports to boost local farmers, and has grown enough of its own this year to supply its millers after a bumper harvest, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Monday. Improved rainfall boosted output and reversed a sharp decline last year when an\u00a0El Nino-induced drought\u00a0forced the country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,30],"tags":[2252,76],"class_list":["post-17593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-southern-africa","tag-el-nino","tag-zimbabwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}