Majsgrød er nationalretten for menigmand i Zambia og den bliver dyrere nu – 900.000 småbønder får mindre i støtte, men støtteordningen har været rasende kostbar for et u-land samt ineffektiv og især gavnet de større landmænd, siger kritikere.
JOHANNESBURG, 30 September 2013 (IRIN): The Zambian government has removed subsidies for farmers and millers (møllerier) because the expenditure (udgifterne) is perceived as draining the country’s resources.
Fuel subsidies have also been removed, and the combined loss of assistance is pushing up the price of maize meal, a staple foodstuff (grundbestanddel) in the Zambian diet (kost).
Removal of the subsidy is just one in a series of similar moves by Zambian President Michael Sata.
He is known for taking a tough stance on issues ranging from Chinese investors, whom he has threatened to deport, to fuel subsidies, which have been removed on the ground that their 200 million US dollar (1,1 milliard DKR) annual cost would be better spent on health and education.
The loss of subsidies for farmers has angered the Zambian National Farmers’ Union (ZNFU), which said the move was “ill-timed”.
“Threatening national food security”
Inadequate rains, an attack of army worms that forced many farmers to replant, and the late delivery of subsidized fertilizers have already affected the 2011-12 harvest.
ZNFU warned that any reduction in support for beleaguered Zambian farmers could threaten maize production and national food security.
“Government has reduced the Farmer Input Support Programme (FISP) subsidy,” the media officer for ZNFU, Kakoma C Kaleyi, said in an email to IRIN.
“Previously, government would pay 75 percent while the farmer would pay 25 percent for 50 kg bag of fertilizer, but now the cost-sharing is fifty-fifty for government and farmers respectively”, noted he, adding:
“A bag of fertilizer costs ZMW200 [about 37 dollar], [with] farmers paying ZMW100 [almost 19 dollar] and government covering the remaining ZMW100, though farmers are still receiving a 10 kg bag of seed for free.”
About 900.000 small-scale farmers covered by FISP have been affected.
Kaleyi noted that in the past some of them had failed to raise enough money to cover even their 25 percent share of the fertilizer cost, so it remained to be seen how they would cope now.
Enormous costs
The FISP accounted for roughly 39 percent of the more than 231 million dollar allocated to the agriculture sector in Zambia’s 2011-budget, yet rural poverty rates remain stubbornly high.
A study by agricultural experts Thom Jayne and Auckland Kuteya, of the Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute, in Zambia, found that the support programme was benefiting wealthier land owners more than poorer ones, and that around 80 percent of rural people were still categorized as poor, despite many years of inputs and consumer subsidies.
“Unbalanced agriculture policies have caused an over-production of maize and hampered the development of other segments (dele) of the agriculture sector,” the International Monetary Fund (IMF) noted in its 2012 country report on Zambia.
“Greedy millers”
The government has said that in 2013 it will continue to buy maize for the Food Reserve Agency (FRA), paying a set higher price to farmers, but will not sell it at a subsidized rate to millers, as was usually done in the past.
Zambia’s Agriculture and Livestock Minister, Bob Sichinga, said in May 2013 that the FRA had been buying maize at the current rate of ZMW 65 (roughly 12,27 dollar) per 50 kg bag, and selling it to millers at ZMW60 (11,43 dollar), amounting to a substantial loss per tonne.
In 2011, for instance, the FRA bought maize from farmers at 270 dollar per metric tonne and sold it to millers at 180 dollar per metric tonne, resulting in a “50 percent loss” to the government, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET) noted.
The programme – which spent 258 million dollar on maize purchases alone in 2012 – was meant to help farmers, while keeping food prices low for consumers, but Jayne and Kuteya found that virtually none of the subsidy to maize millers was passed on to consumers.
Consumers pay more
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98849/removing-subsidies-in-zambia-the-way-to-go
