The Gun Counter

President Robert Mugabe is preparing to step down, a few hours after the Zimbabwean military took over power, a leading South African news website has reported.

Jered wrote:

President Robert Mugabe is preparing to step down, a few hours after the Zimbabwean military took over power, a leading South African news website has reported.

BBC is reporting.

Vonz90 wrote:About time - of course it is 50/50 the new regime is worse.

Mike OTDP wrote:It's Zimbabwe. I'm not sure there is a worse.

Paul Zakariya of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union says only a total revamp of the agricultural sector will bring about a return to the days when Zimbabwe produced enough to feed itself, and agriculture contributed some 40% of the country’s foreign currency earnings through exports. “What we need is agricultural finance that is packaged properly for agriculture in the various sectors, communal, small-scale commercial, large-scale commercial, and we’d also want to look at not only working capital but investments in infrastructure, like irrigation, like the feeder roads....”.........

.....To make matters worse, commercial banks are refusing to give loans to farmers, dismissing as “unbankable” the 99-year leases they offer as collateral. The bankers argue that they cannot repossess the land in case the farmers default, because, in their present form, the leases give farmers the right to farm but not ownership of the land, because the land officially belongs to the state.

Termite wrote:Since 2001, Zimbabwe has failed to produce enough maize to meet the country's requirements. Not only maize(corn), production of other staple grains are way down. Much of this can be directly traced to the "fast-track" land reforms that Mugabe pushed thru their legislature, where crop land was taken from large-scale commercial farms owned/run by white farmers, and given to poor blacks who often had little knowledge of modern farming.
All this in a country that was known as the "bread basket of southern Africa"...........

Paul Zakariya of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union says only a total revamp of the agricultural sector will bring about a return to the days when Zimbabwe produced enough to feed itself, and agriculture contributed some 40% of the country’s foreign currency earnings through exports. “What we need is agricultural finance that is packaged properly for agriculture in the various sectors, communal, small-scale commercial, large-scale commercial, and we’d also want to look at not only working capital but investments in infrastructure, like irrigation, like the feeder roads....”.........

.....To make matters worse, commercial banks are refusing to give loans to farmers, dismissing as “unbankable” the 99-year leases they offer as collateral. The bankers argue that they cannot repossess the land in case the farmers default, because, in their present form, the leases give farmers the right to farm but not ownership of the land, because the land officially belongs to the state.

LINK

It's the perfect storm of economic stupidity and agricultural ignorance.....