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Committee challenges NFRA on diversification

The Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture has challenged the National Food Reserve Agency (NFRA) to diversify towards other food items, saying overreliance on maize is affecrting people’s socio-economic wellbeing.

The committee’s chairperson Sameer Suleiman said this after a visit to an empty NFRA warehouse in Limbe, Blantyre on Thursday, a situation the institution attributed to low maize output in the Southern Region due to El-Nino weather.

He urged the institution to be flexible and buy other food items such as rice to meet people’s food needs.

Said Suleman: “At times where maize production is affected by weather and climate change effects, NFRA needs to be proactive to stock both maize and other food stuffs

“ “This is not national maize reserves, it is national food reserves and this should entail NFRA management to be flexible and make independent decisions.”

In an interview, NFRA chief executive officer George Macheka, who admitted that the Limbe warehouse has largely been empty this year due to poor yields, said diversification plans are underway.

He said: “In our strategic plan that runs from 2024 to 2030, diversification is one of the key components and we are looking at keeping maize, rice and beans. Between now and April we are looking at procuring between 3 000 metric tonnes (MT) of rice and 2000MT of beans.”

Maize is the country’s staple grain and its availability or lack thereof has a direct impact on inflation, the general rise in the prices of goods and services.

Maize as part of the food component, contributes about 53 percent to the Consumer Price Index, a basket of consumer goods and services for computing inflation.

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