The Food Reserve Agency (FRA) has purchased more than one-million-tonnes of maize from farmers since the opening of the 2026 crop marketing season on May 1.
This represents over K6 billion in disbursements to local farmers.
The FRA has also purchased more than 100,000 tonnes of paddy rice against a target of 300,000 tonnes.
FRA board chairperson Sureshi Desai said that the agency had bought more than one million tonnes of maize as of Friday, August 28, 2026, demonstrating the scale of the ongoing crop marketing exercise.
Mr Desai said in an interview yesterday that the timely payments were a demonstration of the Government commitment to ensuring farmers received their money promptly after supplying their crops.
He said that the agency remained committed to the Presidential directive requiring farmers to be paid within three days of supplying their crops, provided they submitted accurate personal and banking details.
“FRA is working to resolve challenges involving delayed payments through improvements to its payment processing systems to ensure that all affected farmers received their money,” he said.
He also thanked the Government for providing financial support to the agency, saying the funding had enabled the FRA to make timely payments to farmers.
Mr Desai also said that the FRA was expanding its storage capacity across the country to accommodate increasing volumes of grain being purchased during the marketing season.
He said that the Zambia National Service (ZNS) and Zambia Air Force (ZAF) were assisting the agency in accelerating the construction of additional storage facilities in various parts of the country.
Mr Desai said that expanding storage infrastructure was critical to ensuring that the agency had adequate capacity to safely store grain purchased from farmers.
