In Hungry Zimbabwe, Pet Food as a Priority

Exports Stressed Despite Shortages For Basic Needs

NORTON, Zimbabwe -- Meals come only once a day for Helen Goremusandu, 67, and the six children she is raising. With prices for the most basic food products increasingly beyond her reach, that daily meal often consists of nothing more than boiled pumpkin leaves, washed down with water.

About a mile away, a Zimbabwean government grain mill is churning out a new product: Doggy's Delight. Announced by its creators in January, the high-protein pet food is aimed at the lucrative export market, one of the dwindling sources of foreign exchange in a collapsing economy.

The shift away from making food for humans -- or for pigs, chickens and other animals that humans might eat -- is just one of the more striking distortions in an economy ravaged by government price controls, hyperinflation and a severe food crisis. The World Food Program estimates that 4.1 million Zimbabweans, about one-third of the population, will need food aid this year.

Goremusandu is struggling to raise five grandchildren and one great-grandchild on her monthly salary of 1.8 million Zimbabwean dollars for part-time cleaning work -- worth about 30 cents in U.S. currency at black-market rates. The finely ground cornmeal used in sadza, the boiled white mush that is the nation's staple food, costs 12 million Zimbabwean dollars for an 11-pound bag.

"People are hungry," said Goremusandu, a widow with deep-set eyes and large, calloused hands. "They should not be prioritizing making dog food when people are hungry."

Zimbabwe was long regarded as the breadbasket of southern Africa, exporting corn, tobacco and other agricultural products to a hungry region. But the industry was dominated by the country's small minority of whites, who controlled most of the prime land until 2000.

That year, President Robert Mugabe, facing unprecedented political opposition, encouraged landless black peasants to invade thousands of farms. Mugabe said the resulting land redistribution would redress colonialism's historic wrongs.

The industry soon collapsed, as the white farmers fled the country and the land fell into the hands of Mugabe's political cronies or was divided into tiny parcels tilled by former peasants with little experience in commercial agriculture. Zimbabwe has received heavy doses of international food aid ever since.

The loss of export earnings also devastated the nation's currency, sending it into a spiral of hyperinflation that has reached more than 100,000 percent. The government and businesses struggle to find sources of foreign currency so they can import essential products such as fuel, food and manufactured goods. Loans from international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, also must be repaid in U.S. dollars or some other foreign currency.

Zimbabwe's economic devastation has made it difficult even for skilled farmers to get tools, fertilizers and seeds.

David Shumba, whose farm is about 30 miles away on the outskirts of Harare, said he stopped raising thousands of chickens last year because feed had become too hard to find and is thinking about giving up pigs, too. Shumba said he bought 20 tons of water-damaged corn last year to feed them, but hungry farm workers already have stolen a ton of it.

Reaching into a bag of dried corn kernels turning brown from rot, Shumba said, "Stuff like this, people eat now."