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Obert Chifamba-Agri-Insight
MAIZE farmers may not have officially issued a list of their grievances, but their body language is speaking louder than argument.
They seem to have embraced this philosophy to demonstrate their displeasure over the price Government is offering for a tonne of maize this marketing season.
The Government pegged the price of a tonne of maize at $75 000, which farmers are reluctant to accept arguing that it is unviable in the face of the current parallel market volatile exchange rates and also lower than the regional prices of around US$310.
And through the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), Government recently announced that 30 percent of the payment would be in United States dollars with the outstanding 70 percent coming in local currency as a way of encouraging early deliveries of grain.
But farmers have also singled out late payments by GMB as one of the major problems, arguing that the local currency component will always be way much less than its original value on the parallel market when they are finally paid, hence their opting to sell to private millers and other buyers and not GMB.
In essence, the farmers’ grievances are genuine and would improve many things along the value chain if they are attended to, but it is the way they have chosen to bring them to the attention of the Government that is a bit offish.
Maybe they could have presented a more compact case if they had just held on to their grain briefly, while engaging the Government over the matter and not sell it elsewhere.
Selling grain elsewhere may appear as an interim solution, but has repercussions in the long run, which will unfortunately involve a string of other people or players that were not initially in the sale of the grain.
What farmers should bear in mind is the fact that some of the maize they will be selling would have been produced under contract arrangements that require them to deliver it to the funder as part of the contractual obligations.
By selling it elsewhere they would have reneged on their contractual expectations, which on its own is an offence.
Farmers should also remember that they do not have to breach national laws and regulations and sell grain outside their contractual stipulations.
If allegations that some farmers are selling their maize to other buyers instead of GMB are true, then it will be very unfortunate because such would have set a very bad precedent that will create distrust between financial institutions/contractors and all farmers, to include even those not guilty of the vice.
This current inertia in grain deliveries seems to be bolstering suspicions of side-marketing, prompting Government to evoke Statutory Instrument 145 of 2019, which states that “no person or statutory body or company or entity shall buy or otherwise acquire any maize from any farmer or producer otherwise than through the Grain Marketing Board.”
The SI also bans the moving of bulk maize from one area to another.
A producer of maize or farmer is permitted to transport not more than five bags of maize of a capacity not exceeding 50 kilogrammes per bag from one area of the country to the other without any authorised person or police officer having to confiscate the maize, says the statutory instrument.
Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development permanent secretary Dr John Basera recently ordered GMB to work with security forces and seize maize meant for any destination other than the GMB — the country’s sole buyer.
The move is meant to curtail side-marketing of grain that will negatively impact on national efforts to build the strategic grain reserves (SGR), while ensuring both household and national food security at the same time.
Operationalising the provisions of SI 145/19 will include, but will not be limited to conducting grain-busting operations at various non-GMB depots, as well as the setting up of permit inspections at various points such as roadblocks.
While Government’s decision to evoke SI 145/19 may appear hash, it is also important to look at the implications of the farmers’ actions on the maize production value chain.
For a programme like Command Agriculture, now National Enhanced Agriculture Productivity Scheme (NEAPS), it is critical for beneficiaries to expedite deliveries to GMB to enable proceeds to be rolled over to fund the forthcoming season.
This a programme that supports commercial production with A2 farmers forming the bulk of its beneficiaries, which means that banks that lend them money would have coughed out huge amounts and would also logically need them to be repaid.
If this does not happen, there will be funding challenges for the next season while the farmers will also not be able to repay debts.
This means that such farmers will not be considered for the next season and the impact will be telling on the production levels for the new season.
In fact, banks that lend to farmers who would not have met their obligations in full will only have themselves to blame if the individuals later default once again.
This is also the reason why Government is going all out to take additional measures and activating all national payment platforms to ensure repayments by such evasive farmers.
Such measures will also include the submission of defaulters’ names to the Financial Clearing Bureau.
The Government has always been the farmers’ guarantor, so if any bank goes ahead and ignores the State’s current moves to bring sanity to the process and funds a defaulting farmer, then it has to assume the risk entirely by itself.
From the onset, Government was only involved in the matrix as a way of bringing the guarantees banks needed to work with farmers.
On the one hand, the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development reserves the right to revoke offer letters of farmers who use them to the detriment of Government-supported programmes, including an intentional failure to settle loans.
This means that Government can simply withdraw a farmer’s offer letter if it is perceived that the farmer is using it for selfish motives detrimental to national interests.
Some farmers may end up facing this ugly scenario if they continue to breach national laws.
And with the Second Round Crop and Livestock Assessment report indicating that the country was going to harvest 43 percent lower grain than the 2020/21cropping season due to erratic and unevenly distributed rains, it is crucial for all grain that was produced to be harnessed for good use nationally.
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