Nakonde Commissioner claims Kenyans buying up maize in the district, fears food scarcity

Farmers in Nakonde are currently selling their maize to Kenyans at K600 per 50 Kilogramme (kg) bag, as the Food Reserve Agency (FRA) is waiting for normal moisture content to start buying the commodity.

This year’s situation is expected to be similar to what transpired last year where most farmers opted to sell their maize to Kenyans as high as K800 for a 50kg as opposed to FRA at K280 for the same quantity.

This has worried area District Commissioner, Marvelous Sikapizye, who in an interview recently in Nakonde, stated that farmers would end up selling all the maize to Kenyans.

Sikapizye was worried about food security in his area as most farmers had already sold their maize to Kenyans following the good price prevailing on the market.

“Kenya right now is buying maize from farmers here in Nakonde at K600 per kg and most farmers have already sold their maize to them. Kenyans are coming to buy maize from these farmers so now we have more farmers selling maize to Kenyans than to FRA. Right now, FRA has not yet started buying maize as they are still waiting for the moisture content, but Kenyans have already started buying.

“Kenyans are buying the whole field before the maize is ready without waiting to put it in the bags. Last year, the Kenyans were buying at K800. So we have been encouraging people to keep their maize and not to sell everything as they will remain hungry. We are worried about food security,” he said.

Sikapizye indicated that farming was the main activity in Nakonde, the more reason farmers in the area were producing large quantities of the commodity.

“The best activity in Nakonde is farming because we have more rain and good land. We depend on maize. We make more money in maize than in anything else. You can imagine here in Nakonde, Kenya and Tanzania, especially Kenya depend on us. So the maize business is booming here in Nakonde. One person here can produce more than 10, 000 bags by 50kgs of maize,” he said.

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