MUTORASHANGA, Zimbabwe -- White farmers gathered on Tuesday for what could be final farewells across Zimbabwe as many prepared to pack their bags to comply with a government deadline to quit their land.

President Robert Mugabe ordered nearly 3,000 white farmers to stop all production in June and gave them until August 9 to vacate their farms and homes to make way for landless blacks.

On Tuesday 60 farmers in Mutorashanga, 100km (60 miles) northeast of Harare, huddled for a group picture at the local social club and in some cases said their last goodbyes.

A burly farmer who declined to be identified said over 70 percent of the group were leaving, and that the majority would seek a new start in neighboring countries or overseas.

"The mood around here is generally depressed. Most of us want to stay in Africa. I want to stay, but my government doesn't want me because of my color," he told Reuters. "There are neighbouring countries around us which have been very responsive and are actually asking us to come. They are opening their door to us."

Mugabe says his "fast-track" land resettlement program is aimed at correcting imbalances in land ownership created by British colonialism, which left the bulk of Zimbabwe's prime farming land in the hands of minority whites.

Another farmer said while he had not been issued with an eviction notice, he did not see much of a future in Zimbabwe.

"The economics of the whole country is collapsing.

It's not viable to farm in this country and I think that is going to be basis of my decision," he said. "A lot of farmers -- if they do leave Zimbabwe -- will never come back, and the expertise of generations that is going to be lost to the country is frightening."

Rootle Braunstein said he was leaving for New Zealand within a week to take up a job as a tool-maker, leaving behind a farm that has churned out 850 tons of wheat, 220 tons of tobacco, 40 tons of paprika and 500 tons of maize a year.

"The reality is i now haven't got a place to farm and my business is basically unable to function any more.

I've made my applications to the government and made my objections but nobody has listened so I'm going," Braunstein told Reuters.

A lone farm truck briefly pulled off the main Mutorashanga road and the driver said that he was ferrying his employer's furniture from his property.

Critics say the land reforms will leave some 250,000 farmworkers unemployed.

"A lot of these chaps have been with us 20, 30, 40 years and they are going to get their package but they're basically homeless," one farmer said.

Farmers have been ordered to pay their workers redundancy packages. The government says farmworkers can apply for resettlement and has encouraged new resettled farmers to employ some of them.

Zimbabwe, facing its worst political and economic crisis in 22 years of independence, is at the centre of a critical food shortage in the Southern African region that includes Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique.

Once a bread basket, Zimbabwe now needs food aid for about six million people because drought and the invasion of white-owned farms has slashed its staple maize output.