FRA depots are dotted around rural areas, managed by local co-operatives. The biggest one in Mfumbeni is located in Chikando village, and is run by the Chipata District Farmers’ Association

Maize farmers in Makwatata, like hundreds of thousands of farmers all over Zambia, have been left unpaid by the government’s Food Reserve Agency (FRA) for last year’s harvest, and many are struggling to make ends meet as the rainy season approaches.

“The farmers are angry, and worried,” says Richard Soko, Chairperson of Mfumbeni Development Association. “They have been waiting on their money for almost three months now. They need this money to send their children to school, and to buy food, but most urgently, to buy fertilizer to use on their land before the rains come.”

“This problem is affecting farmers all over the country. The government has not budgeted well, and now we are all left in a state of uncertainty,” says Soko.

Under the national Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP), members of local farmers’ groups and co-operatives are entitled to sell their maize to one of the many FRA depots around the country for a fixed price of 65,000Kw per 50Kg bag, almost twice what the farmers receive from private farm-gate traders. They are given a receipt for the sale, and must then travel to Chipata on a specified date to collect their money. The problem this year, however, is that the FRA has not yet set a date for the majority of farmers to collect their money.

The Food Reserve Agency was created by the Zambian government in 1996 in order to maintain a strategic food reserve, and manage storage facilities and crop marketing for maize. It specifically targets smallholder farmers in remote areas who do not have access to markets because of high transport costs involved in travelling to business centres.

The grain stocks held by the FRA amounts to up to 600,000 metric tonnes of maize at a time. The main aim of the FRA is to stabilize prices and distribute revenue to farmers as well as ensure national food security.

This problem is affecting farmers all over the country. The government has not budgeted well, and now we are all left in a state of uncertainty

According to the Times of Zambia, the FRA requires a total of 1.5 trillion Kwacha to buy all the maize from farmers in the country this year. “This is a colossal amount of money which the treasury alone cannot provide given the limited resource envelope,” says President Rupiah Banda.

Last week, Banda announced that the government had secured a further 632 billion Kwacha in addition to a 700 billion Kwacha loan from a consortium of commercial banks for maize purchases, and that 150 billion Kwacha would be distributed on a weekly basis from now on until all farmers have been paid.

Many farmers are worried, however, that they will not receive their maize money on time to purchase government subsidised fertilizer, which the FRA willstop distributing at the end of this month.