daniel chigunwe
Zambia’s maize harvest will be the lowest since 2008, dropping 54 percent, after El Niño brought the most severe dry spell in at least four decades earlier this year, wiping out crops.
Farmers produced an estimated 1,5 million tons of the staple food, compared with 3,26 million tons a year earlier, Zambia Statistics Agency statistician-general Goodson Sinyenga told reporters last week in Lusaka, the capital.
The outcome is worse than the government’s March estimate that farmers would reap about 1,75 million tonnes, Agriculture Minister Reuben Mtolo Phiri told reporters. The decline comes even as growers planted a greater area.
In April, the government allowed corn imports to help cover the projected deficit, which will be the first substantial volumes brought into the country since 2004. Zambia’s Food Reserve Agency increased its purchasing price for white corn on the local market by 18 percent, in a bid to replenish the national strategic food stocks.
Africa’s second-largest copper producer is looking to other nations in the region, including Tanzania and Uganda, to meet the shortfall as it deals with the impact of the drought which has crippled power generation too, with daily rolling blackouts lasting at least 12 hours. About 85 percent of the country’s electricity is hydro-generated.
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema declared the drought a national disaster in February and made an appeal for international aid in April. The government has received commitments totalling about US$500 million from its partners to deal with the effects of the drought, according to secretary to the Treasury Felix Nkulukusa. It needs about US$900 million this year. –Bloomberg
Online Reporter