In Zimbabwe, Even the Farmers Are Going Hungry
By MICHAEL WINES

MARONDERA, Zimbabwe — The grasslands surrounding Harare, the capital, are blessed with rich soil, good drainage and a temperate climate that comes from sitting a half mile above sea level. Amon Zimbudzana raises corn on four acres of it.

Yet on a recent morning, he walked the mile from his thatched hut to a clearing in the bush here to collect sacks of free corn for his family from international relief workers. Mr. Zimbudzana is destitute — so destitute that the family celebrated the New Year with a 20-cent pack of Zimbabwean Kool Aid; so destitute that two children are unable to attend school for lack of the $6 tuition; so destitute that he cannot buy food to tide his family over until his own harvest, in April.

Soon after the harvest, he will be destitute again. He expects to harvest about 100 pounds of corn, enough to last about two weeks.

"This is prime farmland," one relief worker said as Mr. Zimbudzana and 900 others waited to collect their sacks. "If people are suffering here, imagine what it must be like in other parts of the country."

One need not imagine. As January ended, the United Nations and other relief agencies here quietly raised their estimate of Zimbabwe's "food insecure" population — essentially, those who have no ready access to a bare-bones daily diet — from nearly half its 11.6 million citizens to two-thirds.

No other nation in Africa has such a high proportion of hungry citizens, the officials say. It is one more testament to the three years of economic and social disintegration here.