By Chinoyi Chipulu
The Food Reserve Agency (FRA) says farmers who benefited from the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) are expected to sell to the agency a minimum of 10 by 50kg bags of maize at the newly announced floor price.
And FRA board chairperson Suresh Desai said the agency upheld President Hakainde Hichilema’s message that no Zambian should die of hunger.
Yesterday, the FRA announced the floor price of maize at K340 per 50kg bag and K300 for a bag of 40kg of rice.
Announcing the floor price of maize and rice at Mulungushi International Conference Centre in Lusaka, Desai said they would ensure that farmers at district level sold a minimum of 10 bags of maize to FRA. He said this exercise would be monitored through the Ministry of Agriculture.
“This is to [help us] know if the farmer utilised the FISP and planted the crop of maize,” Desai said.
He, however, said it was up to the farmer to sell the balance of the bags to FRA or elsewhere.
He said FRA was just one of the buyers but intended to play alongside private sector buyers.
“We are not a monopoly but just one of the buyers,” Desai said.
He said the production of rice was also increasing in the country and FRA targeted to purchase 10,000 metric tons of rice and 543,000 metric tons of maize, among others. Desai said the maize floor price of had been conducted in consultation with other stakeholders who included the Ministry of Agriculture, Zambia National Farmers Union, Zambia Cooperative Federation, and Millers Association of Zambia, among others.
He said FRA believed that the set price would compensate farmers for their resilience and hard work and encourage more people to get into maize production. He further appealed to famers to prioritise food security for home consumption as they thought of selling part of their produce.
Desai thanked the government for the continued support rendered to FRA in fulfilling its mandate of ensuring food security. He also acknowledged the strategic intervention by the government and other stakeholders in the 2023 and 2024 agriculture season when the country experienced the worst drought.
Desai said if not well handled well by the government and other stakeholders, the effects of the drought would have been more severe and many people would have died.
He said what the government did resulted in people having available food to eat and that FRA upheld President Hichilema’s message that no Zambian should die of hunger.
