Millions of Zimbabweans are threatened with starvation after the widespread failure of the latest harvest brought on by the government's disastrous mishandling of land redistribution, and food shortages in the shops caused by hyperinflation.

The United Nations says hundreds of thousands of people require food aid immediately because they have harvested little or nothing in recent weeks. It has warned that up to 5 million will need assistance in the coming months. A third of the population is chronically malnourished.

But attempts to assist them are blocked by a ban on foreign aid agencies working in rural areas after President Robert Mugabe said they were fronts for "regime change" by Britain and the US.

Aid workers say the first signs of looming famine are evident, with significant population movements and children arriving at hospitals suffering from kwashiorkor (a form of malnutrition). Many families are reduced to one meal a day, with some living on fruit berries.

The UN says that it has seen a significant rise in the number of entire families fleeing to South Africa.

Food availability has also been hit by hyperinflation, which economists say runs above 10m%. The central bank is issuing a $100bn note today, the highest denomination to date but worth less than 10p.

The crisis is adding to the pressure on Mugabe to cede power to his opponents and save his country from further disaster.

But he defiantly continues to blame the shortages on an anti-government conspiracy, accusing companies of deliberately withholding fertiliser and other agricultural necessities. He has threatened to jail those he says are responsible.

At the weekend, the government said it was preparing to seize foreign-owned firms it accuses of supporting sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders.

A medical worker in Matabeleland, where the maize crop failure was almost total, said that there were widespread food shortages and what did arrive was mostly given to members of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

"The situation is extremely severe in Matabeleland. Hunger is extreme. There are the odd maize deliveries but it only goes to people with Zanu cards. Even where there is food people can't afford it," she said.

"In St Luke's hospital in Lupane there are 16 children aged five to 12 with kwashiorkor. That's significant because in children of that age it's usually not related to HIV. It's almost certainly because of malnutrition and it's only the tip of the iceberg. These are the ones who made it to hospital. Most wouldn't."

"You see other signs that people are not getting enough to eat. There's an avalanche of people leaving."

In the Masvingo area in the east, witnesses say newly settled farmers are abandoning their land after the crop failures and making for towns. A Zimbabwean official in the area said large numbers of people were now resorting to desperate measures to survive including selling off precious livestock that often represented the bulk of a family's wealth.

"It is difficult to stop people leaving the land," he said. "People are selling livestock. They get five kilos of maize for two goats. For a cow it's 300 kilos of maize."

"People are no longer interested in politics. They are talking about how to survive, how to get money or food."

A report last month by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation and World Food Programme estimated that the recent maize harvest was down 28% on last year, which itself fell 44% on 2006.

The former white-owned farms are producing just 10% of the food they did a decade ago and long-established communal farmers, who used to grow the bulk of Zimbabwe's maize supply, are now growing about 25% of former production.

The report blames the crop failure on a combination of poor weather, a collapse in productivity on the redistributed white-owned farms and other government policies that have helped created shortages of seeds and fertiliser, and led to the collapse of infrastructure such as power and irrigation. It says unrealistic price controls have undermined the market.

The FAO/WFP report says that 2 million people will need assistance in the coming weeks as what remains of their food stocks runs out.

That number will rise to to 5.1 million early next year.

A WFP spokesman, Richard Lee, said that the principal obstacle to delivering food was the ban on foreign aid organisations that handle distribution on the ground. "The issue is the continuing ban on NGO activity. We were rounding up 300,000 of the most vulnerable people but because of the restrictions on NGOs we are only able to reach about 135,000 people. NGOs are absolutely crucial to our ability to deliver," he said.

The UN is pressing the government to lift the ban, although some foreign aid agencies feel it is not pushing hard enough.

Lee said that the WFP was hearing anecdotal evidence "that the situation is worrying in many areas".

"We're hearing these sorts of stories about reduction in meals earlier than usual. It is worrying that it is happening so close to the harvest. It's not Ethiopia in the mid-80s but clearly it is very worrying," he said.

Agriculturalists warn that the situation is not likely to improve with the next harvest. Zimbabwe requires 27,000 tonnes of maize seed for a season's planting. This year's yield looks likely to fall as low as 2,500 tonnes, leaving farmers with little to plant.

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