A couple of months ago, Zimbabwe’s Lands and Agriculture Minister, Anxious Masuka, announced that we’d had a bumper harvest, producing 2.9 million tonnes of maize – well above our national requirement of 2.2 million tonnes. Blue Ribbon Foods normally runs two shifts a day, producing up to 60 tonnes of maize meal a day. He estimated Zimbabwe needed to import an extra 1.1 million tonnes of maize. ADVERTISEMENT: CONTINUE READING BELOW“If the government does not move with speed to reopen the borders for grain imports, the country will be in the throes of a shortage within weeks,” Pienaar said. The sights are those empty silos, empty grain depots, and empty pallets that we can all see every day as we go past Zimbabwe’s grain storage facilities.