The Small Scale Farmers Development Agency-SAFADA has expressed concern over the Food Reserve Agency (FRA)’s decision to close the 2022 crop purchase programme.
FRA announced that according to its weekly crop purchases trend, the Agency projected to achieve the 2022 target within the week ending 31 August 2022 and it is in this regard that the Agency closed the purchase of white maize, soya beans and paddy rice as of 1st September 2022.
However, the Agency noted that it would register farmers that have already delivered their crop at designated satellite depots in order to expedite purchases and to avoid sending farmers back.
SAFADA Executive Director Boyd Moobwe explained that it is too early for the FRA to stop buying crops from farmers because some farmers are still harvesting their crops adding that some farmers take time to harvest as they are harvesting more than one crop.
“Some farmers are still harvesting, those with bigger farms, some started late in July and others take a month to harvest their fields as they don’t harvest one crop, they have soya and other crops so they start with some crops, then maize as they wait for moisture to reduce”, he said.
In an interview with the Zambian Business Times-ZBT, Moobwe said FRA should have closed the crop purchase programme in October in order to give room to farmers to sell their maize to the Agency as they did last year when farmers were able to sell their maize up to November.
Moobwe mentioned that when farmers complained that FRA had closed the purchasing programme early last year, the Agency extended the purchase period in order to help farmers but this resulted in FRA having difficulties with paying the farmers, as they had no money.
He said farmers would now have to rely on private buyers, which is unfortunate because most farmers wanted to sell their produce to FRA.
“It’s alarming and confusing to hear that FRA has closed because farmers are still harvesting and wanted to sell their produce to FRA but they have closed their doors as they have met their target. They should continue buying because farmers don’t have any other place to sell, though there are private buyers but FRA was a dependable market”, Moobwe said.
