Posted on July, 3, 2019 at 10:36 am
Written by Ireen Kayira
Civil Society Agriculture Network (CISANET) through its report has urged government to commission money for early purchase of maize by ADMARC so that farmers should benefit.
This came as a recommendation during CISANET validation and dialog meeting on the network's report dubbed the political economy of maize market in Malawi.
Speaking with the Malawi News Agency (MANA) on Thursday in Lilongwe, CISANET Consultant, Henry Chingaipe said the report found out that ADMARC starts purchasing maize late when farmers have already sold their maize to private buyers.
“Money for the purchase of maize should be allocated earlier before the end of the financial year so that when farmers start selling their maize, Admarc should be ready to buy the staple grain,” Chingaipe said.
He added this should be done to ensure that farmers are not selling their maize to vendors because of cash distress at ridiculously low price.
“Admarc gets to the market late in July sometimes in august when people have already started salling maize in May,” he lamented.
He said the coming in of ADMARC late on the market makes people sell their maize at less than farm gate prices announced.
The report also recommended that there should be a system that cuts off the unproductive middlemen who shift maize from one place to another and benefit at the expense of farmers who heavily invest their labor and resources to produce maize.
He said cutting off middlemen can be done supporting farmers so that they are able to aggregate, assemble, brand the maize and sell directly to larger grain traders or processors so that they can get decent price.
Programs Director for CISANET Alfred Kambwiri said they necessitated the study because maize in the country is grown by over 90% of the farmers because it is a food crop for the country.
"If you look at maize, a lot of farmers do not benefit from the crop and those that benefit are the ones who are in the high value chains," Kambwiri said.
He said this study was conducted in order to find the politics behind maize market in so as to find out if there is a way smallholder farmers can benefit from their labor because maize is not a profitable crop for them.
"After this study, we want to make a positioned paper from the recommendations that we have drawn and share it with the ones in the policy arena," Kambwiri said.
Furthermore, we want to take this report to the parliamentary committee on agriculture so that they can understand politics around maize crop so that when we are talking of depoliticizing maize markets they should be able to understand.
Source: Malawi News Agency (MANA Online)