Rural Zimbabweans are facing a "desperate" food security situation due to a combination of a bad harvest and deepening poverty that has exhausted household coping mechanisms, development workers told IRIN this week. In Matebeleland, according to the available data, "people are already cutting down to one meal a day", Ed Watkiss of Christian Aid told IRIN. "There could be widespread hunger and malnutrition by early next year." The Zambezi valley, and parts of Manicaland and Masvingo - areas that were hit by cyclone Eline last year - have also been affected.

This season's harvest of the staple maize was patchy across much of Zimbabwe. Save the Children Fund's (SCF) Chris McGyver told IRIN that in Binga district in the Zambezi valley, along the northwestern border of Zimbabwe, there was a 40 percent drop in food production. The area has historically been a food deficit region. "Because people are already living at a fairly stressed level, even a small shock in the system is enough to catapult people into a disastrous situation", he said.

"People are hungry but they are not dropping dead," noted McGyver. "But if we don't do a pre-emptive intervention now, by next year we could be screaming to the donors to save lives." In Binga, SCF has assessed half the households as "poor" and in need of aid, and is planning a relief operation to cover 60,000 people over the next four months.

Christian Aid, alongside partner organisations, has launched a food distribution programme for primary school children and under fives in selected localities across much of southern Zimbabwe and Matabeleland North. But the organisation has found that in some areas, the numbers of children expected to receive the rations of fortified porridge have been under-estimated. "There are lots of orphans and kids from the urban areas," Watkiss said. While Zimbabwe's inflation rate has hit 70 percent, food inflation is over 100 percent, and "with urban poverty shooting up, people are sending their kids into the countryside". --- IRIN

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http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/sa/countrystories/zimbabwe/20010919a.phtml