Unpaid farmers, empty plates: Zambia’s growing food security risk
By Elvis Ng’andwe
Failing to pay farmers who have already produced and delivered food is not only unjust; it is self-defeating. It signals that local producers are expendable, that food is a commodity before it is a right, and that future production can be postponed without consequence. In reality, the consequences are already unfolding.
Food security is not a privilege, a seasonal aspiration, or a matter of political convenience. It is a basic human right and the first duty of any responsible government. A state that cannot guarantee that its people can eat, through stable, affordable, and accessible food systems, fails at the most fundamental level of governance. No political programme, legal reform, or economic ambition can be justified if citizens are left hungry in a country capable of feeding itself.
Food security is commonly understood through three interdependent pillars: availability, accessibility, and affordability. Yet global experience increasingly demonstrates that these pillars cannot be sustained without food sovereignty, the right of people and states to control their own food systems in ways that prioritise local producers, ecological sustainability, and human dignity. Where food sovereignty is weakened, food insecurity follows, even in countries endowed with land, water, and labour.
This reality was forcefully reaffirmed at the World Food Forum 2024 held in Rome, where policymakers, civil society actors, and global institutions converged around a stark conclusion: countries that undermine their smallholder farmers ultimately undermine their own food security. Hunger today, participants warned, is less the result of natural scarcity and more the consequence of governance failure, misplaced priorities, and deliberate policy choices.
This warning speaks directly to Zambia’s current crisis.
At its core, food security is inseparable from the right to life, dignity, health, and development. International human rights law recognises the right to adequate food as part of the broader right to an adequate standard of living. Governments are therefore not merely encouraged, but obliged, to take deliberate, concrete, and targeted steps to ensure that no one goes hungry.
In Zambia, this obligation is urgent. Zambia is not a food-scarce country. It has vast arable land, ample water resources, and a predominantly rural population with deep agricultural knowledge passed down generations. Hunger in such a context is not inevitable. It is manufactured.
When the state fails to pay farmers who have already produced food and delivered it into national custody, it is not merely breaching contracts or administrative timelines. It is undermining a human right and violating its primary duty to protect citizens from hunger.
Despite Zambia’s agricultural potential, the country continues to struggle with food insecurity and persistently high food prices. This paradox cannot be explained by production failure alone. It is the result of policy and governance choices that systematically weaken local food systems while privileging political expediency and elite interests.
Small-scale farmers are not marginal players in Zambia’s economy. They are the backbone of the country’s food system. These farmers produce the bulk of Zambia’s staple maize, supply the national strategic food reserves through the Food Reserve Agency, and sustain rural employment, household incomes, and local economies across the country. Their geographic spread ensures that food availability is stabilised across provinces rather than concentrated in a few commercial enclaves.
Multinational agribusinesses, by contrast, play a limited role in securing staple food for the domestic market. Their operations are often export-oriented or based on contract farming models designed for profit efficiency rather than national food stability. While they may contribute to foreign exchange earnings or technology transfer, they do not guarantee affordable food for Zambian households, nor do they absorb the climate, credit, and livelihood risks faced daily by rural communities. When shocks occur, whether climatic, financial, or political, it is small-scale farmers, not multinational corporations, who carry the burden.
In food sovereignty terms, Zambia’s food availability is secured by local farmers, not multinational enterprises. Any disruption to the production cycle of these farmers, particularly at the critical planting stage, directly weakens national food security and exposes the entire population to future shortages, rising food prices, and increased vulnerability to hunger.
It is within this context that the delayed payment to farmers who supplied maize to the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) must be understood. This is not a minor administrative delay. It is a structural violation of food sovereignty and a direct assault on human dignity.
Farmers who delivered maize months ago remain unpaid. Their Bank accounts have been frozen due to unpaid input loans. Casual labourers are idle. Planting is delayed. Children are being withdrawn from school because fees cannot be paid. Families are sleeping on floors, cutting meals, and selling assets while waiting for money they have already earned.
The moral contradiction is glaring. The state has custody of the maize, yet farmers have no custody of their livelihoods.
Zambia’s current situation mirrors a warning repeatedly raised at the World Food Forum: hunger today is often the result of governance failure, not natural scarcity. A bumper harvest was achieved. Farmers delivered maize to FRA in good faith. Financing arrangements were pursued after maize had already been collected.
By failing to synchronise procurement with guaranteed and ring-fenced payment mechanisms, the state transferred fiscal and political risk to smallholder farmers, the very actors upon whom the next harvest depends. This is not prudent management. It is systemic negligence. Surplus has been transformed into vulnerability, abundance into anxiety, and hunger is being invited in a food-producing country.
The tragedy of unpaid farmers is unfolding alongside significant public expenditure on political and legal priorities. Resources have been channelled into costly by-elections such as those in Chawama, controversial legislative processes like Bill 7, prolonged court cases involving the Lungu family, and widespread administrative inefficiencies. Whatever their political or legal justifications, the opportunity cost of these expenditures is undeniable.
The money wasted or mismanaged in these processes could have paid farmers on time, secured the planting season, and safeguarded national food security. Instead, multinational corporations and large contractors are paid promptly, politically connected actors rarely wait for dues, and the farmers who feed the nation are left unpaid, indebted, and exposed. This hierarchy of payment reveals a disturbing inversion of national priorities.
Global experience shows that states which protect local farmers protect their food systems. Liberia has prioritised value-added agriculture rooted in local producers. Bhutan has embedded biodiversity, women-led farming, and food sovereignty into national policy. Lesotho, despite limited arable land, has safeguarded food access through regional cooperation while investing in local resilience. The lesson is consistent: neglect farmers and hunger follows.
Zambia’s persistent food insecurity is not caused by lack of land or labour. It is driven by overreliance on maize without adequate farmer protection, climate stress without irrigation investment, weak rural infrastructure, and delayed, unpredictable, and inequitable state payments. Non-payment erodes trust, discourages youth participation in agriculture, deepens rural poverty, and pushes farmers from productive expansion into mere survival.
Food sovereignty is not an abstract slogan. It is operationalised through concrete, timely, and just actions. The most immediate of these is paying farmers on time.
Failing to pay farmers who have already produced and delivered food is not only unjust; it is self-defeating. It signals that local producers are expendable, that food is a commodity before it is a right, and that future production can be postponed without consequence. In reality, the consequences are already unfolding.
When local farmers are excluded from liquidity at planting time, hunger is not accidental, it is invited. Zambia’s food security will not be guaranteed by multinational corporations, emergency imports, or strategic reserves alone. It will be guaranteed when the state recognises food security as a human right and honours its primary obligation to the farmers who feed the nation.
Elvis Ng’andwe is an advocate of the High Court for Zambia.
