lers, packing companies and distributors to deliver all maize and wheat to the state-owned Grain Marketing Board.
The raid on farms to seize stocks is being spearheaded by a team of soldiers enforcing Operation Maguta.
Land Reform minister Didymus Mutasa has astonished much of the country by claiming that there is no shortage.
“There is much maize in the country and we may not even need to import if we manage to impound all the maize from commercial farmers,” he said.
The Commercial Farmers Union has said the accusation against the farmers was nonsense.
By seizing animal feed to give to people, said a farmer who had his animal feed seized in Chinhoyi, the regime was forcing farmers to slaughter their stock.
This will cause the numbers of cattle, pigs and chickens to fall sharply, he said.
While the slaughter provides a temporary boost to the meat supply, the numbers of breeding animals will be drastically cut. And the seizures are taking food not only from animals but farm workers and their families.
The weary farmer said: “I told them the grain was for my livestock, the men who work here and their families. I even told I will have to slaughter my pigs because I have nothing to feed them with, but they took all the grain all the same. And why not? If you don’t have enough food to feed people, then it’s better to take it from the animals.”
The wholesale confiscation of the most productive farms has created a catastrophic food shortages. Many rural areas – notably Matabeleland, Masvingo and Mashonaland – are already facing serious food shortages.
In the cities, shops are bare of the cheaper basic maize, and the supplies of the more expensive, refined variety are limited. Cooking oil and sugar have not been seen in many areas for weeks. The few stores that have milk ration it.
The government blames white farmers for the crisis, saying they are hoarding food to bring down Mugabe.
The 2006 harvest fell 60 percent short of more than 1,8 million tones of maize Zimbabwe consumes each year. This year promises to be even more serious, with the annual harvest expected to produce far less than the county needs, according to the government’s own statistics.