Maravi

Expert ties failures of grain reserves to vague policies

Expert ties failures of grain reserves to vague policies
By Kabanda Chulu in Lilongwe
Thu 09 Sep. 2010, 14:50 CAT

Malawi AGRICULTURE and Food Security adviser Tobias Takavarasha has said frequent political interference and complicated management structures are behind failures of the strategic grain reserves in Eastern and Southern Africa.

During the African Agriculture Markets Programme (AAMP) policy seminar on ‘Risk management in African agriculture: taking stock of what has and hasn’t worked’ in Lilongwe, Takavarasha said the rationale for holding food reserves was well intended.

Takavarasha, who served as executive director at the Zimbabwe Grain Marketing Board (GMB) in the early 1990s, explained that the objective of holding food reserves was due to the deepening food crisis in Africa as a result of low productivity and low levels of technology use.

He said the increasing numbers of people with no economic access to food, predominantly rain-fed agriculture with minimal irrigated farming, unreliable and poorly developed early-warning and market information systems coupled with weak domestic food production systems and cross-border trade restrictions, were some of the factors that had necessitated the idea of having food reserves.

“But strategic grain reserves have not worked well in our regions due to conflicting and unclear stockholding policy objectives and unclear stock release and replenishment procedures coupled with complicated management structures and frequent political interference,” Takavarasha said.

“Also poor maintenance of storage infrastructure leading to loss of stored grain and the limited role of the private sector in reserve stock and frequent import and export bans as governments respond to fluctuations in domestic supply are some of the factors failing the successes of grain reserves.”

He said if well operated, strategic grain reserves would ensure the availability of grain in times of production shortfalls and providing a guaranteed market for surplus production especially for smallholder farmers as well as contributing to a safe storage of food and reduced post-harvest losses.

“To a limited extent, strategic reserves ensure stabilisation in food prices for urban and rural consumers and national food reserves are unavoidable due to production variability, but must be kept minimal, hence governments should ensure that food reserve systems and policies are tailor-made to the needs of specific countries and there is need to diversify the composition of foods in the reserve (main countries relies on maize) and private stocks should have a role to play in national reserves,” said Takavarasha.

Labels: TOBIAS TAKAVARASHA

posted by MrK @ 4:47 PM