20100727
reuters

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's troubled farm sector has started to recover from depths plumbed two years ago when it faced a food crisis, but funding problems could cut into programmes helping farmers recover, a U.N. official said.

"There was an improvement from 1.2 million tonnes to 1.3 million tonnes," Jacopo D'Amelio, a regional information coordinator with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday.

"There's also a feeling that the food security situation is improving from what it was in 2008, when the country had probably its worst output," he said.

International aid for the once famine-threatened country, better use of land, and the end of hyperinflation have led to the improvement.

The southern African country, once a regional bread basket, has failed to feed itself since 2000 following President Robert Mugabe's seizure of white-owned commercial farms to resettle landless blacks, leading to sharp falls in production.

The economy, crippled when inflation hit 500 billion percent in late 2008, has stabilised under a coalition government set up last year by bitter rivals Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

The new administration has struggled to attract crucial aid from Western donors, who clashed with Mugabe in the past over policy differences and now want more political and economic reforms from Harare before releasing financial support.