According to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, how much will Zimbabwe’s cereal production drop from last year?

The United Nations is predicting food shortages in Zimbabwe this year because of government policies that al-lowed war veterans to take over hundreds of white owned farms, crippling their production.
     In a report published Friday, the U.N. Food and Ag-ricultural Organization foresees a nearly one-quarter drop in Zimbabwe’s cereal production from last year. This includes a plunge of more than 50 percent in corn yields. The report says Zimbabwe will probably need to import more than 500,000 tons of cereals this year, but has only the hard currency to purchase about one-fifth that a-mount.
     The FAO study says the urban poor and low-income residents of southern and eastern Zimbabwe are most vulnerable to food shortages.
     Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has described the seizure of farms as a justified protest against the ownership by whites of about a third of the country’s productive land.
     The government wants to expropriate white-owned land without compensation and redistribute it to landless blacks.