WFP: Food aid still needed in Zimbabwe after crop failures led to harvest shortfalls

WFP: Food aid still needed in Zimbabwe

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A U.N. agency says Zimbabwe will need humanitarian aid this year after crop failures caused a grain shortfall of about half a million metric tons.

The World Food Program said Wednesday that one-third of the country’s districts — mainly in the south and east — failed to produce enough food to meet their needs in coming months.

Some 1.5 million people received food handouts in each of the first four months of this year.

Erratic rain — too much in some areas and too little in others — has damaged crops of corn, the staple food across the southern African nation. The former regional breadbasket also has been hit by acute shortages of seed and fertilizer.