Zimbabwe doesn't have the bread to buy flour

Guardian:

Zimbabwe's main bakery said yesterday that bread shortages would worsen after closing one of its biggest outlets due to a lack of wheat, deepening a food crisis which a UN agency said was "acutely serious".

The closure followed the government's recent admission that it could not afford to pay for wheat from Mozambique.

Amid an economic crisis with runaway inflation and chronic food and fuel shortages, Robert Mugabe's government had planned to buy 36,000 tonnes of wheat from its neighbour to ease the bread shortage.

Lobels Bread, the country's biggest bread producer, has only two days' supply of wheat and has been forced to cut daily production to 40,000 loaves from 200,000 loaves in May, Lemmy Chikomo, the firm's operations director, told state media.

Mr Chikomo said that Lobels had shut its bakery in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second biggest city, on August 25 and had sent home hundreds of workers at its main factory in the capital, Harare.

"Flour availability has deteriorated, and this has forced us to use our strategic stocks since May. Now we are only left with two days' supply," he said.

Officials from the state-owned Grain Marketing Board, which is responsible for managing national wheat and maize stocks, were not immediately available for comment. The World Food Programme's Zimbabwe representative, Kevin Farrell, said it was seeking an additional £50m to deliver grain to southern districts, which are suffering most from the shortages.

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This is what happens when control freaks like Mugabe seize control of the market place. Despots cannot revoke the laws of supply and demand. The story did not mention whether the despot got one of the 40,000 loaves. The Times has more on the food shortage and the fear that violence may result. It does raise the question of where they would get the energy to fight.