But this may change if present trends continue and it gets harder to find non-GM sources for such ingredients as soya oil and maize syrup.

ECONOMIST: Another gene genie out of the bottle | The

Initial food parcels weighing 26 kilograms should provide individual families with enough maize, beans and cooking oil for the first week.

BBC: Goma resilient despite devastation

Unlike conventional plastics, their ultimate raw material is not oil, but maize.

ECONOMIST: Evanescent or evergreen?

Price controls have caused staples such as maize meal, sugar and cooking oil to vanish from the shops, to the delight of black-marketeers, who are often ruling-party hacks or army officers.

ECONOMIST: Zimbabwe

Cooking oil, sugar and Zimbabweans' staple maize porridge have become very hard to come by in Harare, harder still in the countryside.

ECONOMIST: Zimbabwe

Take oil prices, for example: these (and government subsidies) determine how much maize is planted for ethanol.

ECONOMIST: World food prices: Whatever happened to the food crisis? | The