**Swiss multinational Nestle says it will stop buying milk from a farm owned by the wife of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe.**Nestle said it bought milk from farms including Grace Mugabe’s Gushungo Dairy Estate to help the country as its dairy industry neared collapse.
The farm was one of many seized from white farmers under Mr Mugabe’s controversial land reforms.
Nestle said its temporary arrangement had now come to an end.
The Swiss firm said that the Dairy Board of Zimbabwe would resume buying from the Gushungo estate and seven other farms, and that it would stop receiving milk from them on Sunday.
“In February 2009 the food and economic crisis in Zimbabwe reached a level where the dairy industry was at real risk of collapse, and the Dairy Board was no longer able to buy milk from these eight farms,” the statement said.
“In light of our long-term commitment to Zimbabwe, we bought this milk on a temporary basis. This helped prevent a further deterioration in food supplies in Zimbabwe at that time.”
For many years Zimbabwe was a major food producer for neighbouring countries.
But the forced seizure of almost all white-owned commercial farms - with the stated aim of benefiting landless black Zimbabweans - has led to the collapse of the agriculture-based economy.
The country has since endured rampant inflation and critical food and fuel shortages, but the economy has stabilised in recent months.
Mrs Mugabe is subject to US and EU sanctions, along with her husband and several other Zimbabwean officials.
But since Nestle is based in Switzerland it is not bound by those sanctions.