Government through the Food Reserve Agency will not start buying Maize from small scale farmers today, July 01 2014 as scheduled.
Agriculture Deputy Minister Greyford Monde confirmed in an interview that the Ministry will not commence Maize purchases due the high moisture content in the grain.Mr Monde said most areas still have grain containing moisture higher than the recommended 12.5 percent.
[pullquote]When they were announcing that they will start July 01, they knew that all the harvested grain in all the areas would have dried. Tell me which areas in Zambia still had rains post May[/pullquote]
He said Government is however ready to launch Maize purchases as soon as the moisture content subsides adding that all the logistics are in place for the exercise.
But industry sources have revealed that the failure to launch Maize purchases is due to lack of funds.
“As we speak, Government has not released any funds to the FRA to start buying Maize. We are likely to see a repeat of the same shambolic Maize purchases even this year. This Government does not have money and it is coming up with several excuses,” the source said.
The source added, “When they were announcing that they will start July 01, they knew that all the harvested grain in all the areas would have dried. Tell me which areas in Zambia still had rains post May? This is another of their failures.”
But FRA Spokesman Daniel Msoka confirmed that the agency will not commence Maize purchases in areas where the moisture content is high.
Mr Msoka said the agency will however start buying in some areas where the grain had dried up.
He however did not state areas where the agency will start buying the crop together.
The FRA is targeting to purchase 1 million metric tons of Maize in the 2014/2015 crop marketing season.
Start purchasing ASAP.Rains ended in April & part of May or else don’t blame brief case buyers if they start xploiting them farmers ……
They are starting with Muchinga, as the moisture content is low there due to political reasons
The truth is that PF lied again without preparing properly. They rush to ‘flagging off” this or that minus doing proper homework.
This is a defenseless point. I urge small farmers to take their maize to Congo where one 50kg bag is K120/bag.
that is why businessmen who you pf government keep calling derogatory names such as unscrupulous, briefcase and so on and so forth buy the maize for less. it is because of not only the high moisture content but a high content of other particles which together stand at a whooping 20%. in international exchange 12.5% is already too high and pushes the grade and prices down.