K160 is too little for the sweat of the small holder farmers

THE Food Reserve Agency has fixed the maize floor price at K160 for the 50kg bag. This is an upward adjustment of K10 or 6.3 percent on the price of the same bag in the 2020-21 marketing season.

If you factor in the cost of production that has increased exponentially in the last five years and loss of the Kwacha’s buying power of almost 25 percent due to inflation, the floor price is not giving any meaningful profit margins to impact positively on the asset formation and standard of living of hard working small holder farmers.

This is simply a symbolic adjustment. The price has been determined not by economic rationality but politics.

It is aimed at appeasing the urban dwellers that could become too noisy for any increase in the final price of meal mealie.

It is partly because of the failure of successive governments to provide a good market that has pushed the rural-based small holder farmers into abject poverty.

To many small holder farmers, this is a seasonal and bumper income for clearing debts and investing in the next farming season. They also have to pay for services as connecting to the rural electricity grid.

And how do they meet all these expenses when they are forced to subsidise the urban dwellers just because of politics?

Many of these small holder farmers are unable to switch to more attractive crops such as sunflower because they do not have the necessarily capital and expertise to do so.

With poorly managed incentives under the Farmer Input Support Programme and continued poor market, majority small holder farmers have fallen into informal contract farming.

This is the scheme under which mostly traders mainly rich Congolese have invaded Luapula and Central provinces and pay small holders farmers upfront for the maize yields. This leaves most of these farmers in poverty because they are ripped off.

The new dawn administration will need to reformulate a comprehensive package that address both sides of the equation - production and marketing to bring the small holders back to the productive levels enjoyed under the Levy Mwanawasa and Rupiah Banda era.