Maravi

FRA plans to purchase 300,000 tonnes of maize

FRA plans to purchase 300,000 tonnes of maize
By Chiwoyu Sinyangwe
Tue 08 June 2010, 07:20 CAT

GOVERNMENT’S premature opening of the maize marketing season when the FRA is not ready to buy the crop due to lack of money and high moisture content has opened up small-scale farmers to unscrupulous buyers.

Over a month after agriculture minister Peter Daka launched the 2010 crop marketing season in Monze with an announcement that FRA would purchase a 50kg bag of maize at K65,000, the grain buyer of the last resort was yet to enter into the market.

FRA plans to purchase 300,000 tonnes of white maize from peasant farmers to keep in strategic reserves.

Sources within the FRA have revealed that the agency has not yet mobilised enough money to enter into the market despite claims by Daka that FRA had sourced US$150 million for the purchase of maize in the current maize marketing season.

The sources also said FRA would only be able to enter the maize marketing season earliest at the end of June when the moisture content was expected to come down to the acceptable levels of 12.5 per cent from the current average of 14 per cent.

Last week, peasant farmers in Eastern Province complained that they were forced to sell their crop at incredibly low prices because of the financial pressures they were going through, coupled with the absence of FRA in the market.

The province has been dotted with a number of makeshift satellite points where most ‘briefcase’ buyers of maize are buying the commodity at between K25, 000 and K35, 000 per 50 kilogramme of maize depending on the proximity the source of the maize is to the buying point.

Greyson Phiri, a peasant farmer from Kapoche constituency complained that the small-scale farmers were being exploited because briefcase buyers were the only ones in the market at the moment.

Phiri, who is also Nduna Anyanje, said there was need for FRA to expedite its entry into the market to protect peasant farmers from further exploitation.

“Even when we sell to FRA, apart from paying you the money late, the procedures of handling maize is so cumbersome compared to these briefcase buyers,” said Phiri, who is also headman Chimunthimbe, in an interview last week.

But Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) president Jervis Zimba urged the farmers to hold on to their maize and wait for FRA to enter the market

Zimba also accused officials from the Ministry of Agriculture of turning themselves into ‘briefcase’ buyers of maize from small-scale farmers which they later sell to FRA at a high price.

“When fertiliser time comes, ZNFU gets regular updates from PACOs and MACOs…but when the marketing season begins, they all go quiet. Why? Because, they become the briefcase buyers,” said Zimba.

Labels: CORRUPTION, FRA, MAIZE

posted by MrK @ 2:54 PM