MAIZE CRISIS LOOMING

Tue, 22 Aug 2017 10:02:51 +0000

By Bennie Mundando

ZAMBIA faces an imminent maize crisis by 2020/21 as droves of farmers abandon the crop following the unilateral K60 per bag imposed by the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) without consulting farmer’s organisations.

Now the farmers union wants an urgent hearing with the Government which they have been denied to date.

Government, according to the National Farmers Union, should not have allowed FRA to set the floor price of K60 which is below the production cost of K71 for those supported by the Farmer Inputs Support Programme (FISP) and K81 for farmers who either bought or borrowed to finance the crop.

ZNFU president Jervis Zimba said of the 3.6 million tonnes bumper harvested this year 1.4 million came from farmers supported by FISP while the bulk came from farmers who either paid cash or borrowed to finance the remaining 2.2 million bags.

Mr Zimba added that while the Zambian farmer was getting K60 for a 50-kilogramme bag of maize, their counterparts in Malawi and Zimbabwe were getting an equivalent of K110 and K190 respectively for the same quantity.

“We should have been consulted before this price was arrived at but there is still time to correct the situation before hundreds of farmers are plunged into destitution.” he said.

Farmers, he said, worked on long term planning, “That is why cotton is in serious shortage in Zambia because farmers abandoned it after the price crash of  three years ago. It has not recovered and may take time to do so. The same will befall maize. The crisis will begin to show by 2020/21.”

And ZNFU has cautioned Ministry of Agriculture Permanent sScretary Julius Shawa for saying the price put by FRA was final before all sides to the issue had been heard.  “This is a very serious matter as farmers in rural areas are being made to part with their maize at K25 per bag.” he said.

Mr. Zimba said with the maize price fixed at K60, farmers were making a loss of K15 per bag from the K85 they were getting last year despite the cost of production increasing, adding that the FRA fixed maize prices without taking into consideration the maize production matrix by not involving stakeholders in coming up with the decision.

 “No farmer has been spared from these exploitative prices from FRA whether they were under FISP or not. It was worse for those who never benefitted from the programme. If a farmer who produced at K71 per bag sells the same quantity at K60, what profit is he making?

Is there any reasonable economic reason why such a farmer should continue producing maize? “It is an assault on the agriculture sector and an insult to the farmers for FRA to maintain this low price but at the end of the day, it is Government that will bear the consequences of this lacklustre thinking by the agency because next season, most farmers will think twice before growing maize as they are bound to make unimaginable losses,”

Mr. Zimba said. He said the problems that faced farmers in Zambia in the 1990s were likely to replicate themselves in the next two to three seasons because there were people in the sector who never took farmers at heart but only interested in pursuing their own interests.