Maize production declines

A sharp fall in production and declining producer prices threatens Southern Africa’s maize crop, Reuters reported on Wednesday, quoting commodity analysts. In Zambia, credit problems and marketing turmoil in the previous two seasons have forced farmers to turn their backs on the crop affecting quality, experts said. The Zambian crop is estimated to be 25-30 percent below last year’s harvest. Lack of credit, limited use of fertilisers and pesticides and poor marketing have combined to undermine production. Government-sanctioned seizures of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe have cast doubt on the quality and quantity of the crop. A spokeswoman for Zimbabwe’s Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), whose contribution to maize output has averaged 40 to 45 percent over the past decade, said production in 2000/01 season had fallen sharply to 385,000 mt from 800,000 mt the previous season. She said farmers had been mainly discouraged by delays by the state Grain Marketing Board (GMB) in paying for their crop in the last marketing season. “Farmers have lost all confidence in the GMB and are diversifying into other crops,” the spokeswoman said. Although the Zimbabwe government insists the country has enough maize stocks to meet domestic requirements of 1.8 million mt, USAID’s Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) said a sharp fall in output means it will run out of maize between mid-January and February 2002.