Board to buy maize at Sh2,200
What you need to know:
- Mr Koskei attributed the drop in prices to over-production of the grain as well as massive imports from the region.
- This year, maize production in the country is predicted to go up to 40.3 million bags compared to last year’s 38.9 million. This is against an annual consumption of 40.2 million bags, indicating that the country will have adequate maize stocks.
- The farmers will, however, get an extra Sh500 for every bag sold to the NCPB as compensation for losses suffered as a result of diseases and delayed rains.
- This came just days after President Kenyatta ordered the NCPB to open its doors and begin to buy maize from farmers.
The cereals board will now buy maize from farmers at Sh2,200 per bag, Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Felix Koskei has said.
The price is below the Sh3,000, which the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) had been paying farmers for a 90kg bag of maize.
The farmers will, however, get an extra Sh500 for every bag sold to the NCPB as compensation for losses suffered as a result of diseases and delayed rains.
The announcement by the cabinet secretary is likely to set the government and the farmers on a collision course after they vowed not to accept any price less than Sh3,200 per bag of maize.
They made the declaration in Eldoret yesterday as the minister announced the prices in his office in Nairobi Wednesday.
Mr Koskei attributed the drop in prices to over-production of the grain as well as massive imports from the region.
“We want farmers to really understand how we came up with the price, we considered the costs of production and that fact that the country is in competition with other countries in the region,” Mr Koskei said in Nairobi when he addressed the media in his offices Wednesday.
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This year, maize production in the country is predicted to go up to 40.3 million bags compared to last year’s 38.9 million. This is against an annual consumption of 40.2 million bags, indicating that the country will have adequate maize stocks.
While making the announcement yesterday, Mr Koskei said the government had set aside Sh2.6 billion to purchase one million bags of maize from farmers.
This came just days after President Kenyatta ordered the NCPB to open its doors and begin to buy maize from farmers.
Five county governments from the North Rift, the country’s grain basket, met with Mr Koskei two weeks ago and pressured him to announce the new prices.
A recent study showed that the cost of producing a 90kg bag of maize in the country is between Sh1,400 and Sh1,800, which means farmers will get an average of Sh600 profit per bag.
This may come as a relief to farmers in the North Rift who feared incurring extra costs in drying the maize to attain the 13 per cent moisture content required by private millers, and other post-harvest losses.
