Posted on September, 4, 2018 at 10:45 am
By AGATHA NGOTHO @agathangotho
The harvesting season has started, yet some farmers still have last season’s maize stock in their stores.
They were unable to sell all their crop to the government due to cartels who flooded the National Cereals and Produce Board depots with stock from Uganda.
To avert a maize glut, an officer from the ministry said they are planning to seek new markets, including the UN World Food Programme, to buy the produce from farmers.
“There are farmers who still have last year’s maize and with the harvest, we will have a surplus of maize. We are planning to talk to the WFP and any other agency that may want to buy maize.”
Johson Irungu, the director of agriculture and crop management in the Ministry of Agriculture, yesterday said farmers from Eastern, Western and South Rift have started harvesting. The peak period in North Rift will start in October until November.
Irungu said the projected harvest for this season is 40 million 90kgs bags, which is three million more bags than last year’s harvest. Noah Wekesa, chairman of the Strategic Food Reserve, said the country has maize stock of 3.6 million 90kg bags.
“This season we are expecting about four million bags of maize at the SFR, but in future we want to increase the capacity to eight million bags. However, this will require more resources to ensure the oversight board has enough structures to serve farmers,” said Wekesa when he appeared before the Senate select Committee on the maize crisis last week.
The Agriculture ministry says since October last year to May this year, the government bought 3.8 million 90kg bags worth Sh11.4 billion from farmers.
The number is more than the country has ever received in five years. But as the harvesting season starts, the government is yet to pay farmers all their dues from the maize delivered in 2017-18.
NCPB acting managing director Albin Sang said the agency has enough capacity to store the maize. This was after farmers expressed fear that all NCPB depots are full and there could be no space for the country to store maize.
He said NCPB has a capacity of 20 million bags across all the depots in the 47 counties. However, this is shared storage for maize, wheat, rice and fertiliser.
“We are in the process of moving 1.4 million 90kg bags from Eldoret, Moi’s Brige and Kitale depots to package them in bags and store them in our Nairobi depot to create space for the North Rift harvest,” Sang said.
A 90kg bag of maize is retailing at Sh2,500 in Nairobi, Sh2,000 in Mombasa, Sh2,600 in Kisumu, Sh1,800 in Nakuru and Sh1,600 in Eldoret.
Source: The Star