The country has so far received about 300 tons from its neighbor, which is the continent’s biggest producer of the grain that’s also known as maize, Zimbabwean Deputy Agriculture Minister David Marapira said by phone today from Harare, the capital.

“We are importing white maize from South Africa and about 10 trucks are have already arrived in the country with the consignment,” he said. “More maize will be coming until we get the 150,000 we need.”

The country’s corn production fell in 2013 to 800,000 tons while prices surged 61 percent, the Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee said in September. Agriculture in the nation, once a major corn exporter in the region, was decimated by violent state-backed land invasions starting in 2000 that dispossessed white commercial farmers of about 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres).

The decline in agriculture triggered a 40 percent reduction in the economy over the next eight years. Inflation soared to 500 billion percent in 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The number of people in need of cereals, vegetable oil and pulses doubled in two years to 2.2 million, or a quarter of the rural population, according to the government survey of 10,797 households, which was supported by international aid agencies including the United Nations World Food Program.