Starved for Food, Zimbabwe Rejects U.S. Biotech Corn – on the face of it, this seems like a problem with genetic engineering, intellectual property, greedy corporations and the whole blah blah, but digging a bit deeper, things seem slightly more complex. The Zimbabwe “president” Robert Mugabe, a one time freedom fighter (and apparently formerly well respected guy), has reportedly been using famine as a tactic to incite unrest (having already crippling Zimbabwe’s agricultural industry—Zimbabwe was once the region’s breadbasket).
Some numbers from a recent Economist article, From breadbasket to basket case:
In all, 95% of commercial farmland has been slated for “redistribution”. Some 60% of commercial farmers must halt work immediately. Another 35% have only received preliminary notices of confiscation, and so may carry on farming for a while longer. The remaining handful have so far escaped, either through the incompetence of their persecutors or because they have friends in government.
…
Mr Mugabe says that his “fast-track land reform” will redistribute wealth from rich whites to poor blacks, from whose families the land was stolen in colonial times. At a recent conference in Rome, he called the programme “a firm launching pad for our fight against poverty and food insecurity”. But since the land is usually handed out to ruling-party loyalists, rather than skilled farmers, the result so far has been the opposite. Cereal production in Zimbabwe has fallen by 67% since 1999-2000, according to the WFP, and looks set to tumble further.
Mr Mugabe does not seem to care. After stealing a presidential election in March, his chief concern has been to punish those who dared to support his opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai.
… And starving peasants who are suspected of having voted for him are denied food aid in areas where the ruling party controls its distribution.