Increase maize price, Caritas Zambia urges State

Sat, 05 Aug 2017 11:06:30 +0000

By CHIKUMBI KATEBE

GOVERNMENT must revise upwards the price of maize and soya beans to protect the already impoverished smallscale farmers from bankruptcy, says Caritas Zambia livelihood & climate change adaptation programme officer Musamba Mubanga.

Ms Mubanga said Caritas was concerned with the recently announced Food Reserve Agency (FRA) floated price of K60 per 50-kg bag for the 2017/2017 crop marketing season against last year’s K85 per bag.

She explained that the price would not benefit smallscale farmers in any way as it would drown them in huge losses from which recovery would be difficult.  “Buying grain from poor smallscale farmers at a low price when we know the price of production is exploitative and any person who care about the plight of the poor farmers ought to speak up.

“Caritas Zambia is concerned over the low maize price floated at K60/50kg bag this year. Compared to last year, this is a K25 reduction per bag in a situation where the cost of input and labour has gone up,” she said.

Ms Mubanga explained that low crop prices have also affected soya beans farmers who have been forced to sell their crop at as low as K1.50 per kilogramme, a situation that called for urgent attention from Government.

She argued that some of the challenges most farmers faced were in public domain, including the delayed implementation of the E-voucher system to 27 districts that with some farmers only getting the inputs as late as March 2017 month end.

“There was also the problem of army worms which forced many farmers to lose money in replanting to replace the crop that was destroyed. The reduction of the prices will just add misery to the already impoverished households,” she added.

She said if indeed Government was to promote agriculture in Zambia, then they were not looking at the peasant farmer, that “many at times farmers have always been on the receiving end of the value chain as opposed to the consumers.”