MAIZE farmers can sigh with relief now that the Government has announced the floor price for next season, setting the ball rolling for the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) to buy the commodity from maize growers country-wide.
Coming at a time when the FRA has started distributing farming inputs, the country’s staple food will now cost K70 from K65 it has been fetching for the past four farming seasons, and this is certainly a morale booster.
Of course it cannot be denied that the floor price, which was announced yesterday by Agriculture and Livestock Minister Wilbur Simuusa, will not be welcomed by all the maize farmers in the country.
This is because for quite some time now, the price of maize has been just as sensitive as it has been divisive.
For instance, even before the Agriculture minister announced the price, some farmers expected and were asking for something higher than the K70 per 50 kilogramme bag of maize, with those from Kaputa District proposing that the price be pegged at as high as K85 per bag.
Other farmers have held the same view because they feel anything less than this would render the maize farming business unprofitable considering the high cost of farming inputs and the cost of producing the commodity generally.
Perhaps taking a cue from these farmers pushing for a much higher price, Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) president Evelyn Nguleka recently sounded a warning, saying there was a risk Zambian farmers could in future shun maize production if there was no upward adjustment in the floor price of maize.
Of course it may be noted that the ZNFU boss made this remark following speculation that there may not after all be any increase in the maize floor price even this farming season.
This came on the backdrop of organisations such as the Millers Association of Zambia maintaining that it was important the maize floor price remained the same, at K65, if prices of mealie -meal were to be stabilised.
It was quite evident that a 50kg bag of maize remaining stuck at K65 for the last four farming season had made this commodity unprofitable.
This at one time forced ZNFU on the Copperbelt to urge its members to diversify crop production and venture into other crop farming. One advice given to farmers was that livestock rearing was even much more profitable.
Other farmers in the same province, however, resorted to exporting the commodity to a neighbouring country where they said it was fetching three times as much.
Even a maize export ban imposed by the Government, as one measure of stabilising mealie-meal prices, seemed to have been totally ignored as the commodity continued to be smuggled out of the country.
However, as all this was going on, there were reports from some parts of the country of small-scale farmers being duped into buying their produce by the so-called briefcase business persons at as low as K25 per 50kg bag of maize.
If some farmers, obviously desperate for cash, accepted and ‘gave away’ their maize produce at this giveaway price, the K70 announced by Mr Simuusa yesterday is surely huge bonus for them. OPINION