President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe spoke at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization headquarters during a food security summit in Rome on Tuesday. (Alessandra Tarantino/Reuters)

President Robert Mugabe called for the West to lift sanctions against Zimbabwe, which he said were designed by "neo-colonialist enemies" who want his land reforms to fail.

Mugabe, speaking at the United Nations food summit in Rome, blamed the "inhuman and illegal sanctions" against his country for the economic meltdown that befell his country after he initiated controversial land reforms.

Under Mugabe's measures that began in 2000, thousands of white-owned farms were handed over to landless blacks, seizures Mugabe argued were necessary to resettle blacks kicked off their land during British colonization.

Critics said the policy left much of the best farmland unused, as resettled farmers did not have the proper equipment, supplies and seed to keep production at previous levels. As a result, a country that was once a major food supplier in Africa has fallen into poverty and faces food shortages.

Last year was a record low for maize production in Zimbabwe, though in 2009 the country was expected to harvest a crop of 1.14 million tonnes, an increase of 130 per cent from the previous year.

Around 2.8 million of the more than 12 million people living in Zimbabwe might need humanitarian assistance before the next harvest in April 2010, according to the latest crop and food supply assessment from the United Nations World Food Program.

The assessment says most of those needing assistance are in rural areas, where many farmers were expected to begin exhausting their crop supplies in October, the organization said.

While Mugabe blamed the country's ills on sanctions, Western countries say those sanctions target only Mugabe and his top aides, and include travel bans and asset freezes.

With files from The Associated Press