Agro market setback

SENTIMENTS by Southern Province farmers that they are ready to diversify from maize to other crops provided they are assured of a market, makes a lot of sense. During a quarterly review meeting on Agriculture Diversification: Towards food production and consumption in Zambia organised by the Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (CSPR) in Choma, the farmers said lack of a readily available market was preventing them from diversifying. They observed that while they were willing to support the government’s diversification programme, the State had neither created a ready market nor demand for the other crops to be produced. The farmers argue that maize and soya beans have a readily available market and wondered who would buy the other crops which had no market.  Indeed what would be the point of spending money on growing other crops other than those that had market if there was no-one to buy from them?  Farming is a business like any other, which means that farmers need to make a profit and recoup their money spent on producing the crops, hence their concerns. We can’t help but agree with the farmers’ concerns on the need for government to create markets. As much as Government wants farmers to diversify from maize to other crops, it must first put the agriculture sector in order. One way of doing so is ensuring that whatever farmers grow finds its way to markets not only for direct consumption but for onward processing into various products – value addition.  In Zambia, it’s not a strange phenomenon to see crops go to waste because farmers have nowhere to sell their produce. Last year for instance, tonnes and tonnes of tomatoes went to waste at City Market in Lusaka because market was saturated. While this was good for consumers because the price of tomatoes dropped drastically, it was not so for farmers. Their efforts somewhat went down the drain given that bulk of the tomatoes ended up getting rotten.  This is exactly what farmers in Southern Province are afraid of …producing crops which will end up going to waste because there is no market. But this is what happens in an economy with few agro processing or food industries where crops such as tomatoes would be processed into other products. Crops such tomatoes, for instance, could be processed into soup, tomato ketchup or indeed other products. Just as another example, not too long ago, the Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) agreed to grow winter or early maize on condition that there was a ready market for the produce from its members.  The farmers successfully produced the targeted tonnage, but the local market cannot not absolve all the maize so the excess will least be exported to the Democratic Republic of Congo.  This is why as government ponders diversifying the economy from copper-mining to agriculture, it must resolve all flaws that have bedeviledthe sector, including the markets issue. For example, just like excess winter maize will be exported to Congo DR, so could government make arrangements to enable farmers export other crops to Congo DR too as a way of creating a market for them. After all, Congo DR does not just need maize or maize meal only but other crops as well. Taking advantage of readily available markets in neighboring countries would therefore motive farmers to diversify to other cash crops. But we are not unmindful that Zambia’s industrial base still not fully developed and as such the issue of forward and backwards linkages in the economy, which could have helped create markets, should be looked into.  Otherwise unless the issue of markets is tackled, farmers will be reluctant to move away from maize growing because it has a ready market. The farmers have a point indeed! The Sun