Prime
Maize market in Cuba is music to our ears
What you need to know:
The issue:
Maize market
Our view:
What then needs to be done is ensure farmers across the country have the information and when and where the produce would be collected from.
The government should also encourage farmers and traders to group themselves so that collection is seamless and easy.
Revelations by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives that the Cuban government intends to buy maize from Uganda are a huge relief to farmers across the country.
If the news provided by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Geraldine Ssali comes to pass, then we are in for a huge paycheck in the farm.
Why is this good news? In the context of the situation maize farmers and traders find themselves in, this would be a huge bargain given the corner they have been boxed into due to poor prices.
The prices of the corn across the country have collapsed so much that farmers are struggling to break even, having invested heavily in the production process.
For instance, in many towns yesterday, a kilogramme of maize was retailing at between Shs600 and Shs1,000.
Many industry experts have attributed the drop in prices to bumper harvest in the last season.
While this is good news for the food security question, it spells doom for farmers and traders who need the sales to pay bills such as school fees.
It should also be noted that Kenya and South Sudan have before rejected our maize, claiming the quality was poor because of substandard post-harvest handling and storage mechanisms.
The loss of market due to restrictive regimes in both Juba and Nairobi implies that Ugandan traders have fewer options for their produce.
It is reported that many across the country are stuck with the produce, yet they are at pains to dispose of it at a loss.
This, therefore, means that the bumper harvest may come at a disadvantage to many farmers who will dispose of their produce for fear of mishandling it.
The emergence of a huge market, which according to officials, will need a minimum of 100,000 metric tonnes of maize every year, means a lot to us.
What then needs to be done is ensure farmers across the country have the information and when and where the produce would be collected from.
The government should also encourage farmers and traders to group themselves so that collection is seamless and easy. We might have frustrated the cooperatives, which enabled the boom of the coffee and cotton sectors decades ago, but having a similar arrangement for this would work a magic. The Cuba example should also be replicated in other sectors. We have heard of a booming coffee market, which calls for value addition before export and so on.
Our call is that we should actualise the Cuba deal. Let it not end at pronouncements.
