"Armed men burst through the gates of my farm and hauled off the last of the maize. I told them that the grain is for my stock and the men who work here and their families," a Zimbabwean farmer said -who asked to be anonymous for fear of reprisals. "I told them that now I'll have to slaughter my pigs because I've got nothing to feed them, but they took the maize anyway".

With just three weeks after the signing of the power-sharing deal, militants are all too aware that the new government will not back the policy of land seizures. The wholesale confiscation of the 280 remaining productive farms has created a potentially catastrophic food shortage and, in desperation, the government is seizing animal feed and any other grain it can find.

Many rural areas – notably parts of Matabeleland, Masvingo and Mashonaland – are already facing serious food shortages. In the cities, shops are bare of the cheaper basic maize, and supplies of the more expensive, refined variety are limited. Cooking oil has not been seen in many areas for weeks. The few stores that have milk, ration it.

The President's critics say the situation is entirely of his making because the farm seizures by ‘war veterans' have left huge tracts of land fallow.
The thousands of small-scale farmers Mugabe said were desperate to start planting have yet to materialise.