A few thoughts from my friend Henry

My friend Henry has a way with words at times. While he and I don't always agree on matters of the world I have to say that he has hit the nail squarely on the head with his most recent email. I thought I would share it with the readers of the blog.

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This what happens when you kill or chase off the real farmers for supposedly good reasons to be replaced by Bozos who know as much about farming as I do. Next year, they will be starving in Zimbabwe and looking for Americans to pay them with our money, which in effect would make us a co-conspirator in the killings and/or displacement of Rhodesians who owned the farms for hundreds of years! There are those Beverly Hills types who have not actually been there, that think giving the land to selected political cronies who happen to be black, is Ok; while I do not see them giving their mansions to the American Natives ( The Chemehuevi tribe in that area!):


(President Robert Mugabe's government claims to have settled 300,000 black families on former white-owned farms, but U.N. agencies report many are derelict, with irrigation and housing vandalized, and livestock stolen or slaughtered.)

Zimbabwe Facing Bad Agricultural Season
Wednesday, September 7, 2005 9:14 AM EDT
The Associated Press
By MICHAEL HARTNACK

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, is facing its worst agricultural season since independence in 1980, with shortages of seed, fertilizer and equipment threatening next year's harvest before it even has been planted, farmers and other experts said.
Some of those warnings were issued Tuesday in testimony before Parliament's agriculture committee, the state-run Herald newspaper and ruling party-allied Daily Mirror reported.
Fertilizer companies told the committee their warehouses were empty. The Zimbabwe Seed Traders Association said there was only 28,660 tons of maize seed in the country, slightly more than half of what is needed.
The Agricultural Dealers and Manufacturers' Association has run out of plow disks for the first time in its history. There also are key shortages of irrigation piping, pumps, pesticides and other chemicals, suppliers said.
"The information you have given us simply shows that there is no season," committee chairman Walter Mzembi was quoted as saying.
The seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans, combined with years of drought, have crippled Zimbabwe's agriculture-based economy. About 4 million people will need food aid before the next harvest in what was once a regional breadbasket, according to U.N. estimates.
"This coming season's production prospects are the worst since 1980 independence due to inputs shortages and the lack of a strong message to allow all farmers to produce with confidence," Doug Taylor-Freeme, president of the mostly white Commercial Farmers Union, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
President Robert Mugabe's government claims to have settled 300,000 black families on former white-owned farms, but U.N. agencies report many are derelict, with irrigation and housing vandalized, and livestock stolen or slaughtered.
Mugabe has promised $287 million in assistance to black farmers.
But Edward Raradza, vice president of the black Zimbabwe Farmers' Union, said 60 percent of the funds advanced by the government for cropping had not reached their intended beneficiaries. His organization represents 800,000 families in communal farming areas.
"There have been too many middlemen," testified Wilfanos Mashingaidze, chairman of the Tobacco Growers' Trust. "The resources from government are going down the drain. They are disappearing like mist."


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Regards,

Henry Hill