Zimbabwe, which used to export food to its neighbours, has seen agricultural production fall sharply since 2000 when President Robert Mugabe began seizing thousands of white-owned farms and redistributing the land to poor blacks.
Food shortages are a common feature of life in the nation.
Mugabe's government has pinned its hopes of an economic recovery on a good harvest in 2008, but production is likely to be handicapped by a lack of technical expertise, funding and equipment.
The Chinese loan, which was signed by central bank Governor Gideon Gono and Chinese deputy Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng during a visit in Harare, will help finance a programme to buy new equipment for the nation's desperate farmers, the Herald newspaper reported.
The Chinese will supply some of the equipment.
Mugabe, who attended the signing, hailed the Chinese for standing by his government, which has been shunned by Britain, the United States and other Western nations, which accuse him of human rights abuses, rigging elections and ruining the economy.
"This friendship is rooted in a formidable relationship ... but we now need to embark on developing this relationship of co-operation with programmes that would enhance and continue what we have built over the years," Mugabe was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
The 84-year-old Zimbabwean leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980, is running for another five-year term in a March 29 general election. He blames the country's economic problems on sabotage by the West
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