Tue, 22 Aug 2017 10:02:51 +0000 By Bennie Mundando ZAMBIA faces an imminent maize crisis by 2020/21 as droves of farmers abandon the crop following the unilateral K60 per bag imposed by the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) without consulting farmer’s organisations. Now the farmers union wants an urgent hearing with the Government which they have been denied to date. Government, according to the National Farmers Union, should not have allowed FRA to set the floor price of K60 which is below the production cost of K71 for those supported by the Farmer Inputs Support Programme (FISP) and K81 for farmers who either bought or borrowed to finance the crop. ZNFU president Jervis Zimba said of the 3.6 million tonnes bumper harvested this year 1.4 million came from farmers supported by FISP while the bulk came from farmers who either paid cash or borrowed to finance the remaining 2.2 million bags. Mr Zimba added that while […]
