The four-week dry spell has caused some farmers to delay planting summer crops, which include the country’s staple corn, while those that sowed earlier have seen plants withering in the absence of rain.
However, the science is disputed by some meteorologists.
While it’s too early to estimate the effects on harvests, the government should start cloud seeding to “save the situation”, he said.
Zimbabwe has endured intermittent food shortages since the government began an often-violent programme that seized most white-owned, large-scale farms from 2000.
The situation has been exacerbated by periodic droughts.
Today, the country is a net importer of crops such as soy, used as animal feed, and, often, corn.
Traditionally, rain falls between late November and early April.
While parts of the country could expect heavy rain in January, it is mostly moving in from from the south, the department said.
Zimbabwe relies mainly on the inter-tropical convergence zone weather phenomenon, which brings rain down from the equator.
“But planting in January?

Provinces such as Midlands, parts of Mashonaland and Manicaland have abundant water resources, while the Matabeleland region, the south-western parts of Masvingo province as well as areas along the Zambezi Valley suffer chronic shortages, with erratic rainfall.
Matende said most women and children in their village carry the burden of fetching water while men engage in other duties.
He confirmed that in most cases, women and children carry the responsibility of digging these wells and fetching water.
While much has been done to ameliorate water supply in urban areas, little has been done to increase access to safe water for rural communities.
Seventy-five percent of those lacking access live in rural areas and the majority of them are women and children.
In the wake of such water challenges, the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society (ZRCS) last month commissioned a $38 000 water pipeline project in Chiwenga ward 24 in Muzarabani.
More than 40% of the population in Muzarabani district without access to safe water is made up of women and children.
Infectious diarrhoea is mainly responsible for the burden caused by water-borne and water-washed diseases.
“Improving access to safe water and basic sanitation services can be the best preventive intervention strategies to reduce diarrhoea.
Unicef in collaboration with the donor community is working on projects to improve access to safe water in both urban and rural communities.

Ezimnyama – As Zimbabwe’s farmers head to the fields to plant, the country is facing yet another dry growing season, meteorologists predict.
And when she travels to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, to sell her crop, she can’t find buyers for the sorghum.
As climate change brings more frequent and harsh droughts, maize is becoming harder to grow in many parts of Zimbabwe – but it is still what people want to eat and many farmers want to plant, which makes shifting away from it a challenge.
Zimbabwe’s government is trying, however.
This year its Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has said it will buy "small grains" such as sorghum or finger millet from farmers at the same price as maize – or let farmers who grow small grains swap them for an equivalent amount of maize to take home.
“You can sell whatever quantity of small grains, such as rapoko, millet, sorghum, to the GMB at the same price as maize," said Marshall Perrance Shiri, Zimbabwe’s minister of land, agriculture, water, climate and resettlement, in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
But farmers have balked at switching, he said, because they fear they will have to eat the sorghum and other small grains they grow, and they prefer not to do that.
Babbage said his farmer’s union was working with the meteorological officials, the Ministry of Local Government and government agricultural support organisation AGRITEX to find ways to cut drought risks and get small-scale farmers to change their minds about planting small grains.
Seed companies "must avail adequate small grain seed for drought-prone areas so that farmers have no excuses not to plant small grains,” he said.
Shiri, the agriculture minister, said farmers who switch to growing and eating maize alternatives could see health benefits – and that such grains were, until recently, staple foods in Zimbabwe.

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Some villagers in one of Zimbabwe’s driest areas are appealing for food and fear their livestock, their source of livelihoods, will die due to a lack of water.
Our cattle are dying because there is not enough water to drink.
It must fix our dam so that we can survive…We want food and water for us and our cattle to survive,” Dungeni said.
The villagers in this Gatsheni-Matopo area say the Mabigwe reservoir dried up, leaving them with no reliable source of water for their animals.
The World Food Program says it needs about $75 million to ensure food stability for Zimbabwe’s “lean season” for the next six months for dry places like Gatsheni-Matopo.
Eddie Rowe, the WFP director in Zimbabwe, told VOA that about 2.4 million people in this southern African nation need food aid because of unusually long dry spells during the rainy season.
“As we speak, we know that in almost every district, most of these households have run out of their harvests and now depend on the market and we all know the problem we are facing.
USAID’s Food For Peace program has given $22 million to the WFP to ease Zimbabwe’s food insecurity.
But their animals will need water – and more drought is predicted.

EZIMNYAMA, Zimbabwe (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As Zimbabwe’s farmers head to the fields to plant, the country is facing yet another dry growing season, meteorologists predict.
Drought-hardy grains such as sorghum are “unprofitable” and hard work, complains the 56-year-old, who farms two hectares (five acres) of land in Ezimnyama, a village near the Botswana border.
As climate change brings more frequent and harsh droughts, maize is becoming harder to grow in many parts of Zimbabwe – but it is still what people want to eat and many farmers want to plant, which makes shifting away from it a challenge.
Zimbabwe’s government is trying, however.
This year its Grain Marketing Board (GMB) has said it will buy “small grains” such as sorghum or finger millet from farmers at the same price as maize – or let farmers who grow small grains swap them for an equivalent amount of maize to take home.
“You can sell whatever quantity of small grains, such as rapoko, millet, sorghum, to the GMB at the same price as maize,” said Marshall Perrance Shiri, Zimbabwe’s minister of land, agriculture, water, climate and resettlement, in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
But farmers have balked at switching, he said, because they fear they will have to eat the sorghum and other small grains they grow, and they prefer not to do that.
Babbage said his farmer’s union was working with the meteorological officials, the Ministry of Local Government and government agricultural support organization AGRITEX to find ways to cut drought risks and get small-scale farmers to change their minds about planting small grains.
Seed companies “must avail adequate small grain seed for drought-prone areas so that farmers have no excuses not to plant small grains,” he said.
Shiri, the agriculture minister, said farmers who switch to growing and eating maize alternatives could see health benefits – and that such grains were, until recently, staple foods in Zimbabwe.

Farmers in Zimbabwe are appealing for funds to irrigate their land, in hopes of fending off a possible drought predicted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
FAO says droughts caused by the El Nino weather pattern are recurring more often and that might affect food security.
At Mugutu farm, about 40 kilometers north of Harare, a tractor tills land ahead of the rainy season, expected any time now.
But at another farm nearby, 59-year-old Tsitsi Marjorie Makaya is focused on raising her chickens.
“We cannot do irrigation, we do not have the money to set up the irrigation system, the money to buy pipes, for electricity, we do not have the money.
We only managed to drill a borehole and that is how we water our garden.
We cannot put the whole plot under irrigation because we do not have all the necessary equipment,” Makaya said.
Sometimes they said there is not much rain and we end up having plenty of rain.
Kormawa said even smallholder irrigation schemes were improving food security and income in countries where agriculture is the backbone of the economy.
Source: VOA News

Farmers in Zimbabwe are appealing for funds to irrigate their land, in hopes of fending off a possible drought predicted by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
FAO says droughts caused by the El Nino weather pattern are recurring more often and that might affect food security.
At Mugutu farm, about 40 kilometers north of Harare, a tractor tills land ahead of the rainy season, expected any time now.
But at another farm nearby, 59-year-old Tsitsi Marjorie Makaya is focused on raising her chickens.
“We cannot do irrigation, we do not have the money to set up the irrigation system, the money to buy pipes, for electricity, we do not have the money.
We only managed to drill a borehole and that is how we water our garden.
We cannot put the whole plot under irrigation because we do not have all the necessary equipment,” Makaya said.
When asked if she was aware of the predicted El Nino drought predicted, the former vegetable vendor said it was beyond people’s control.
Sometimes they said there is not much rain and we end up having plenty of rain.
Kormawa said even smallholder irrigation schemes were improving food security and income in countries where agriculture is the backbone of the economy.

Worse still, they now live in the epicentre of Zimbabwe’s deadliest cholera outbreak in a decade.
As of the 19 October, the current outbreak – one of several in Zimbabwe this year – had claimed at least 54 lives nationwide, with three quarters of the nearly 10,000 infections in densely populated Glen View and Budiriro.
According to health officials, the outbreak began in early September after two boreholes and a well used by Glen View and Budiriro residents for drinking water became contaminated by water from burst sewage pipes.
NGOs and private companies stepped in to provide tanks of water for the school, which needs to provide drinking water, toilets, and washing facilities for its 2,000 children.
Bjorn Nissen, MSF’s country director, told IRIN that boreholes drilled using new and improved techniques must be embraced as a solution until the city can provide clean and safe water in sufficient quantities to everyone.
In areas like Glen View and Budiriro, waste from burst sewage pipes easily flows into shallow wells, contaminating the water table.
Boreholes drilled in areas plagued by sewer leaks are often highly contaminated, particularly if the borehole is not deep enough.
“We have rehabilitated more than 70 boreholes in 13 suburbs in Harare.
So far, Malik said, there has been “zero contamination” in boreholes drilled using the new and improved technique, and MSF is in discussion with the City of Harare to roll it out more widely.
“What we need is fiscal commitment from both the local authorities and government towards WASH. We need a water budget.

Harare – As Zimbabwe plunges into its worst economic crisis in a decade, gas lines are snaking for hours, prices are spiking and residents goggle as the new government insists that the country – somehow – has risen to middle-income status.
After ousting the repressive Robert Mugabe almost a year ago following more than three decades in power, and peacefully electing President Emmerson Mnangagwa in July, many hoped the country would emerge from turmoil and return to prosperity.
Instead, it appears to be imploding in the days since the new finance minister announced a "stabilization program."
Over the weekend long lines for fuel reappeared, sometimes stretching for several kilometers.
Anxious residents rushed to stores, where prices skyrocketed for dwindling stock and shop workers began removing price stickers.
People have started joining any line in sight.
The important thing is to get in the queue, there might be something there," said Yvet Mlambo, a resident of the capital, Harare.
Even beer is rationed, to some outrage.
But the new currency shortage has forced most people to use a surrogate currency called bond notes, bank cards and mobile money, all of which are devaluing quickly against the U.S. dollar on the black market.
But Zimbabweans have reacted angrily to one of the new measures, a tax on transactions conducted with mobile money and bank cards.

PANIC gripped the country’s retail sector yesterday, with some shops rejecting some bottled water brands deemed as contaminated.
But Dairibord Zimbabwe, bottlers of the Aqualite brand, came out guns blazing against the report, stating that their water was safe for consumption and saying their distillation process was up to standard.
"Aqualite is certified by Standards Association of Zimbabwe, who also carry out independent verification.
EMA has not engaged us as would have been expected for us to understand where the disparity in their tests is arising from," Marimo said.
We retain samples of our production for verification if the need arises."
THE price of bread may revert to $1 from $1.10 per loaf in the next two weeks as grain processors are engaging Government over procurement of wheat.
The shipment is due to arrive in the next 14 days," he said.
"Bread is currently at 50 percent supply and we are only able to supply mostly urban areas," Mr Musarara said.
He said grain millers needed $30 million in foreign currency each month for procurement of wheat, of which $7 million went towards bread.
Mr Musarara said the market for bread had dramatically increased in the last decade due to changes in dietary patterns of people.