‘Lend one another maize for sale to FRA’
By Mast Reporter
A LEADER in Sinda District in Eastern Province has advised farmers who have not harvested enough to lend one another bags of maize to sell to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) to continue receiving government support.
District agriculture committee chairperson Daiman Mvula was commenting on complaints from some traditional leaders that their subjects who were beneficiaries of the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) did not have the maize to take to FRA as government .
Mvula said FISP was a good programme which government had introduced to help farmers.
“So we hear that there are some complaints and we further advised farmers to help each other like if one has 20 bags, he lends the friend who doesn’t have 10 bags which he can register in his name just for them to remain on the programme but when monies are out, the owner of the maize gets it. This initiative has been well received by most farmers and this is what they are doing by sharing maize so that each one who is on the program is not removed,” Mvula said.
He said farmers in the district were not surprised by the statement Minister of Agriculture Reuben Mtolo Phiri that each farmer should take 10 bags of maize from this year’s harvest to remain on the FISP.
In an interview to mark the Farmers Day, defended the minister saying farmers had signed up to the programme and agreed to comply with its terms last year before the distribution of inputs.
“The statement by the agriculture minister in Parliament is not strange to farmers in Sinda District because the minister spoke what was already agreed earlier before the distribution of the farming inputs. All our farmers agreed that after harvest, they ought to sell some of their crops to FRA and they signed the forms. So it’s not a new thing. We know it and we agreed,” Mvula said.
He said he was not worried about hunger in the district because farmers had managed to harvest enough grain for their homes and were able to sell few bags to FRA.
“To be honest, our district is not bad as compared to other districts. We managed to get something that we can eat and some to take to the government market. But we have other districts where things are literally bad. Here we are okay,” Mvula said.
He said it was important for farmers to sell some of their maize to government because what was sold to FRA came back to the communities once they faced hunger, unlike when it was sold to briefcase buyers.
“I want to take this opportunity to urge our farmers that taking maize to FRA has more benefits than taking it to briefcase buyers. Government is buying and keeping for us so that when we are hit with hunger we get helped,” he said.
District agriculture coordinating officer Kennedy Kaputo said farmers under his supervision were happy with FISP and that no such complaints had been submitted to his office.
“Our farmers are happy with government programmes. We have not received any reports of them complaining. But all we hear and see when we move around is farmers flocking in numbers to sell their produce to FRA satellites across the district,” Kaputo said.
He urged farmers to remain committed to contributing to the national food basket through their work.
Kaputo said one youth group from the district which had gone to represent the province at national level at the Zambia Agriculture and Commercial Show had scooped the first position.
Last week Chief Kathumba of the Chewa people in Sinda and Katete had complained that some farmers in his chiefdom had not harvested enough maize and asking them to take their produce to the government market might put a burden at them which might be too hard to bear.
